


Campout

by Mishiman



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polythieves (Persona 5), Video Game Mechanics, Voyeurism, glamping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-07-18 11:27:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16117448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mishiman/pseuds/Mishiman
Summary: Being stuck in Madarame's Palace overnight isn't so bad, right?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hurt my own feelings with what I did to these characters in my other fic, Graffiti, so this is me making myself feel better. I promise this one will be mostly lighthearted and fun
> 
> This first chapter is not explicit but things will get explicit by the next chapter

**Day 1**

Ann knew something was wrong before they'd even looked outside.

  
It hadn't been the infiltration. Everything had gone smoothly, and Akira had called it a day relatively early, confident that they were well on track to steal Madarame's heart before his exhibit downtown ended. But as the five of them skulked down the hallway of the museum, aiming for the skylight that would lead them to the parking lot, her hair began to stir. It must not have only been hers, either, because they all stopped short abruptly. Yusuke was usually fairly composed, but even he was on his guard, bracing for combat and searching for the source.

  
They looked at Ryuji.

  
"It ain't me!"

  
They looked at Akira.

  
"I don't even _have_ a Persona with zio on me right now," he protested.

  
In battle, she'd felt her hair lift and move all on its own, like a thing possessed, dozens of times before, but it had always fallen limp again once Ryuji's or Akira's electricity discharged. This time it went on and on, an uncomfortable crawling sensation that made her scrub her scalp with her gloved fingertips, and she was about to complain until she saw how bad Morgana had it. There were tiny static charges nestling amongst the fur of his ears, and his tail was puffed out like a brush. He shook his head over and over, trying to dislodge the electricity, but he found no relief.

  
"Rrrgh!" he growled. "If this is a new Shadow, it must be pretty big - "

  
They heard the storm long before they reached the open skylight.

  
Just standing below the skylight was like being trapped inside an empty oil drum being beaten with sticks. They each clapped their hands over their ears as the thunder rolled near continuously and peered up at the sky. Every other infiltration, the weather had remained the same - overcast, the sky dappled with moody blue clouds that reflected the museum's spotlights back for best effect. But now, for the first time, things had changed.

  
That didn't seem like a good sign.

  
Akira signalled them to follow and led them to a corner that overlooked the front entrance doors leading to the parking lot, and -

  
Shit.

  
Ann saw and _felt_ the lightning course down from the sky. It was blinding, and the air was so thick with electricity that it lit up her catsuit, sparks winking in and out up and down her arms like little blue fairies. The thunder washed over them in a wall of sound, shaking the floor beneath them, and suddenly it all hammered at her hindbrain. It was too much. The light and noise and electricity overwhelmed her, and she ran for cover.

  
She wasn't the only one. They made for a small stampede, and in the confusion she almost missed Morgana belting down the hall. He was crying out helplessly, utterly terrified.

  
"Mona - !"

  
"Come back!"

  
He either didn't listen or couldn't hear them over his own panic. He disappeared around the corner, just barely avoiding being detected as he crossed a Shadow's path and skittered underfoot.

  
Akira lunged forward a step or two, uncharacteristically flustered, but then stopped in his tracks and let out a sigh of frustration. "Safe room, guys."

  
\----------

  
"How could he just _leave?_ Stupid cat - "

  
"He's just scared, Skull," Ann said, tired. Acting as the buffer between Morgana and Ryuji was exhausting, and she shot Akira a Look, one that indicated it was his turn next time.

  
Akira stretched in his office chair, putting off answering, and finally nodded. "We'll go find him. I don't like the idea of him out there alone."

  
Yusuke nodded himself, agreeing with Akira's sentiment before changing topics. "I don't like the look of that storm, either. Was your first Palace subject to such extreme weather?"

  
Ryuji took off his skull mask and rubbed at his face beneath it. Their infiltration had been shorter than most, this time, but it still took it out of you. "First one looked weirder. Freaky red sky. But it never changed, I don't think."

  
That was an unsatisfying answer, but there wasn't anything else to be said. They pushed their chairs away from the table, left the safe room, and started looking.

  
Old habits died hard. The four of them held their breath as museum staff trundled by, keeping to the shadows and searching each room they came to as stealthily as possible, but that was no way to find someone. They finally decided to drub a few Shadows and clear a room fully, one of the exhibit rooms with the lofty ceilings, so they could risk shouting.

  
"Monaaaaa - "

  
Spending what felt like an hour or more covering old ground with aching feet and frazzled nerves meant that it felt pretty good to let off some steam. Their voices, Yusuke's at the lowest register and hers at the highest, Akira's and Ryuji's closer to the middle, made a satisfying cacophony. But Morgana didn't come back.

  
"He _has_ to be able to hear us. He's just bein' difficult," Ryuji scowled, and this time, no one stuck up for Morgana.

  
Akira looked like he wanted to agree with him. "Well, I think we're stuck here either way. That storm looked pretty deadly."

  
Yusuke's face remained impassive as ever behind his fox mask, though he sounded worried. "Will he know where to find us, should he decide to return on his own?"

  
Akira's face brightened. She could tell he felt better with a plan of action. "Yeah, we'll just - " He knelt on the floor, waxed to a mirror shine, and began scratching away at it with his dagger.

  
MONA   
1ST EXHIBIT ROOM  
SAFE ROOM

  
She wondered if that was such a good idea. "Should we really just advertise where we are... ?" she asked him.

  
"You think these things can read?"

  
It was hard to say how much of a Shadow's behaviour was actually it reacting to a new situation in a way that showed signs of intelligence and how much was preprogrammed pageantry. She had to admit that there was a good chance that they really couldn't read.

  
Akira got to his feet. "Anyway, I don't really see what else we can do. We can't look forever. Let's leave a few more."

  
He enlisted Yusuke and his katana's help, and together they left two more markers for Morgana, etched into the floor in two other rooms in tall, spiky characters.

  
Ryuji just became more and more agitated, though. His leg jittered as he waited for them to finish, and when he began to pace, Ann finally sidled up to him and poked him in the side. "What's your deal?"

  
"We gotta - I gotta get _home,_ that's my deal. We been in here way too long. My mom's gonna flip out."

  
Fair point. They headed toward the skylight again, talking when the coast was clear as they went.

  
Akira slapped him on the back. "Bet it'll be okay. Time's slow in here, remember?"

  
When they'd first begun infiltrating Kamoshida's Palace, they'd wondered aloud why time moved more slowly in the Metaverse, though Morgana had never been able to provide a satisfying answer. Ryuji shook his head, annoyed. "Yeah, I _know_ time's all fucky in here, but it still feels too long, you know?"

  
They didn't have to make it all the way to the skylight to hear the thunder or see the way the lightning lit up the darkened hallway. You could still feel the ozone in the air too, a dry but somehow greasy feeling. Ryuji reacted in predictably foulmouthed fashion.

  
Back to the safe room, then. Ryuji was still fretting about his mom. "Yeah, I get you, but - " Akira shrugged, a what can you do? gesture, and slumped on the couch, all lazy grace. "I guess Sakura will chew me out for coming home late." He didn't sound too terribly concerned.

  
Yusuke was looking at his hands, folded neatly in front of him on the safe room table. "I hope that breaking curfew will not give Madarame cause to suspect me."

  
"I'm sure it'll be fine," she said. They were all looking at her, now, and she thought of her empty house. Her caretaker kept things running while her parents were overseas, which was most of the time, but someone who was paid to make your meals was pretty different than having someone like Ryuji's mom waiting for you at home. "I bet Kawakami would wonder where me and Joker are," she finished lamely.

  
She'd managed to suck all the levity out of the room, if there'd been any in the first place, and that hadn't been the best angle to take, either. Ryuji's eyes went huge. "You think we're gonna be in here all _night?"_ He threw himself backwards in his chair. "Let's go check outside again. Maybe it stopped."

  
It was impossible to tell from the safe room whether the storm was still going, and given how loud and constant the thunder had been, that was for the best. She understood why he'd want to keep checking, but - "Come on. We just _did."_

  
She'd brought the mood down. She had an idea to bring it back up again, though. "Anyway. It's - it's just like camping, right? Camping out for one night's not so bad."

  
Ryuji rolled his eyes and scoffed, and Akira looked incredulous, but Yusuke's face lit up like she'd never seen. Not that she'd known him all that long, of course. "I had never considered urban camping before."

  
"That's called bein' homeless, dude."

  
Akira knew what she was trying to do, though. He met her eyes over Ryuji's head and did his part to lift the mood. "Not if we build a fire. Then it'll really be like camping." He couldn't help but take a dig at her, though. "Not that we'll be roughing it or anything."

  
She'd heard some of this before. She knew Akira wanted to give off the aura of being at home in the city, now that he'd come to Tokyo, but she hadn't been hanging out with him long at all before he was listing off all of the ways living out in the country was different. No, not different. Better. "Yeah, yeah, country boy."

  
Yusuke was already in love with the idea. "A campfire... what will we burn?"

  
Four pairs of eyes settled on the couch, then quickly looked away in mutual agreement.

  
"We are _not_ burnin' the couch - "

  
"I didn't say that we _should - "_ Yusuke backpedalled.

  
"Let's go look for firewood," Akira said firmly, and stood up from the table.

  
"Wait wait wait. Hold it," Ryuji said. They settled into their chairs again. "It's all just... paintings in here. In the museum."

  
Yusuke was usually up in the clouds, but you could haul him back down to the ground again if you tried. "They would let off some fairly toxic smoke," he allowed.

  
"There's HVAC. There's vents," said Akira, stubborn.

  
Ann peered at the ceiling. The light was low in here, so it was hard to tell. "There's gotta be sprinklers though, guys."

  
There was a strangely familiar sound, a quiet sucking of air sort of sound, full of intent, and then there they were. The sprinklers were just barely visible above their heads, solid and real.

  
Whoa. "Did you guys _see that?!"_

  
Ryuji shook his head, but Akira and Yusuke nodded, looking a little spooked. "That sounded like when a Shadow appears," Akira said slowly.

  
They'd all seen it before. Usually the museum was bustling with guards and staff doing their rounds, but sometimes you could catch one coalescing out of the air itself, like footage of a thought forming. It made just the same sound that the sprinklers had.

  
"Did I just _make_ those?" she babbled.

  
Yusuke was still new to all of this and looked especially bewildered. Not that they understood something like this any better than he did. "But this Palace is Madarame's cognition, not ours," he said.

  
Akira plucked at his own coat. "This is us, though." Then he pulled out his pistol, summoning it out of thin air as they each did when they needed their weapons. "This, too." He had a point - his pistol had appeared silently, and the Shadows had always looked like tar pulling itself into a solid form, but aside from that, its materialization wasn't so different in concept than the Shadows or the sprinklers.

  
"Yeah, but that ain't the _museum,"_ Ryuji argued. "If we could just say shit 'n make it happen then there'd be no point to any of this. We could just say 'oh, there's the Treasure' 'n it'd just... be there."

  
They all stared at the centre of the table in front of Ryuji's hands, as if it could be that easy, but it looked like Madarame's Treasure was going to play hard to get.

  
"Maybe it's a safe room thing, then. It wouldn't work on the Treasure, but in here - " She tried to remember how Morgana had explained safe rooms in the first place. Their very first safe room in Kamoshida's castle felt like a decade ago. "Mona said the Palace owner's cognition is weakest in here. In the safe rooms. So maybe our cognition is stronger... ?"

  
It was a working theory, at least. Akira tested it, speaking to the ceiling. "There are no sprinklers in here."

  
The sprinklers flickered like a candleflame, then snapped back to solidity.

  
"One outta four won't do it, maybe," said Ryuji, craning his neck to look up. "I sure am glad there's no sprinklers in here!"

  
That had to be it. Yusuke and Ann jumped in at once.

  
"How fortunate that there aren't - "

  
" - any sprinklers in here."

  
The ceiling was smooth and featureless again. No sprinklers. They traded baffled looks and got to their feet, then headed back out to the museum to forage for firewood.

  
\----------

  
Another two rooms' worth of Shadow guards spattered apart, their fights made more difficult by their lack of a Navigator, and Ann was starting to seriously rethink the whole campfire idea.

  
"My feet huuurt - " she whined.

  
"Yeah, yeah. Quit yer bitchin'." Ryuji yelped and stumbled forward as she kicked his ass for him.

  
"Behave, children," grinned Akira. He didn't look like he meant it one bit.

  
"Well. My leg's done too," Ryuji admitted. "We gotta have enough by now."

  
Yusuke turned his entire body to look at them. "If we see another on the way back to the safe room, I can still carry more fuel."

  
Yusuke had the longest arms, so they'd swiped as many paintings from the walls as they could and loaded him up right up to his chin. She knew how heavy their thick wooden frames were from helping Akira take them down, so she couldn't help but be a little impressed. Yusuke was either very strong in the Metaverse or very dedicated to making their campfire work.

  
"I thought I had fuel." Ryuji looked at the rolls of fabric tapestries he and Ann had wedged under each other's arms.

  
"You've got kindling," Akira corrected. He really was very proud of his dumb camping knowledge. " ...maybe it is just more fuel. Honestly, we should have some small branches, but - "

  
"Uh huh," she said, walking more quickly toward the safe room and hoping they'd all speed up behind her so she could get off of her feet. "And what do you have? Again?" Akira's hands were empty.

  
She looked over her shoulder to see him giving her that snarky grin he was so good at. "Tinder. Lots and lots of tinder." He patted his coat pockets, where he kept the weird bits and pieces of scrap materials that the Shadows sometimes left behind. Shadow lint, he called it, even when it was the stuff that looked like pieces of metal or string.

  
Ryuji pulled even with her just so he could waggle his eyebrows at her. "Joker's definitely got Tinder."

  
This was not the first time they'd made this joke, or similar ones, at least, and it probably wouldn't be the last. They had no proof of what he did all over the place late at night - cleaning up after his ex-yakuza buddy, he'd say, and they'd roll their eyes, or he'd tell them he was chatting with a politician, and they'd trade mystified looks. All they knew was that he was the busiest guy they knew, and any messages sent after dinnertime would go unanswered until well after midnight.

  
It was a dumb joke, but not so dumb that she didn't want to add to it. "Yup. Joker's full up."

  
Ryuji usually couldn't keep a joke subtle for long. "Yeah, he's got a school calendar and a - a dicking calendar - "

  
"I'm sure there's an app for that - "

  
Akira gave each of them a little slap on the back of the head as he strolled between them. "You think I _need_ Tinder?"

  
Ryuji whispered, "Oh, sorry. Grindr, then," just loud enough for Akira to catch it, and the snort they heard from him made them both grin.

  
Ryuji looked at Ann, and she looked at him. Without needing words, they each dropped their armfuls of tapestries to the floor at the same time and waited for Akira to help them pick them up, distributing them more evenly between the three of them.

  
Yusuke went by, barely able to see over his stack of paintings, though the sliver of his face that they could see between the paintings and his mask was very red.

  
\----------

  
Things felt a little more cheery once they were sitting around a roaring campfire.

  
Akira had been _insufferable,_ of course. He'd turned out his pockets and fretted over the placement of every tiny scrap of yarn and bark until she'd lost patience and summoned Carmen, immolating the whole thing in an instant. He'd panicked and complained that his kindling wasn't ready, so they'd dumped the tapestries onto the blaze in the centre of the room, all at once, then quickly stomped the oil paintings out of their frames, broke up the wood into pieces and tossed them on too. There. Easy.

  
It was impressive how different the safe room felt. Instead of a dark, modern office, it became a strange mix of outdoors and indoors, a place where it felt equally possible to roast marshmallows or send a fax. She made herself comfortable and admired the way the friendly orange light played over their outfits.

  
Akira was on a different wavelength. "It's uneven," he announced. Back to this again. Still pouting over his stupid fire. "It's going to suffocate." He took off his mask and moodily frisbeed it over the fire, onto the couch that lined the far wall.

  
"And then we'll all freeze to death," Ann said dryly.

  
"The wolves'll get us," Ryuji added.

  
"Yup. Tokyo wolves," she said.

  
Suddenly Yusuke spoke up, reminding her that he'd remained almost completely silent since they'd returned to the safe room. He fed fraying pieces of painted canvas to the fire as he did, fascinated by the flames. "You know, the odour of this fire is certainly a pleasant surprise. I was expecting it to smell of burning varnish or paint. Or of the carpet beneath it. Instead it smells more like - " He inhaled deeply. "Wood smoke. What I've always imagined a pine wood fire to smell like."

  
Of course that was enough to alter their cognition. They heard the quiet whoosh that indicated a cognitive change, the sound that Shadows made when they took form, and a second later the scent of burning chemicals flooded the safe room.

  
"Wood smoke!" Akira chanted from behind his hand, clamped over his mouth and nose. "Wood smoke, wood smoke - "

  
Ann and Ryuji joined in, staring down Yusuke until he caught on and they were all nearly shouting it. "Wood smoke, wood smoke - _the fire smells like wood smoke - "_

  
Another cognitive change, and it was safe to breathe again. The campfire sent a minimal amount of sweet smelling smoke curling up to the featureless ceiling - not a sprinkler in sight - where it was neatly disposed of by a nearby vent. They uncovered their noses, then noticed that Akira's mask was off and removed their own. It seemed polite.

  
Yusuke looked grim, now that they could see his face properly. "I'm sorry. I had already forgotten the effects our cognition could have." He even bowed his head as he apologized, and she realized that he was actually distressed.

  
He was still so new, and he seemed like the type to take everything too seriously. She resolved to try to include him a little more. She knew from experience that it sucked being the new person, even without considering the Madarame shit he was going through. "No big deal, Fox. It's okay."

  
Ryuji and Akira picked up on what she was doing. "No harm done, right?" said Akira.

  
"Yeah, no worries, man."

  
Yusuke's shoulders relaxed, and so did theirs. They fell into a silence that was only slightly uncomfortable, staring into the flames, until someone's stomach growled for several seconds at a time, making her laugh. "Was that _you?"_ she demanded, grinning and turning to face Yusuke without thinking.

  
He had that look on his face again.

  
"You're just coverin' for yourself," Ryuji said immediately, giving her a meaningful look.

  
She nodded hurriedly. "O-oh, haha, yeah, you got me. I could eat a hooorse."

  
She could just barely hear Ryuji muttering. "Don't do the _voice,_ fuck - "

  
Ryuji liked to give her shit for it, but her acting skills were good enough to fool Yusuke, at least. He gave them a ghost of a smile. "I have always wanted to try horse."

  
Ryuji'd already forgotten that they were trying to make Yusuke feel better and rocked backwards, laughing. "Well I don't got any in my _pockets - "_

  
Akira saved the day. He cleared his throat until they were all looking at him and drew something round, mostly white and wrapped in saran wrap from his coat pocket. He spoke like he was holding a press conference. "I'm sorry to disappoint you all, but I don't have any horse in my pockets. I do, however, have a katsu bun that I stole from Leblanc this morning," he announced.

  
He could be very dramatic. Ann rolled her eyes. "Was it in the fridge? The cafe fridge?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
She started to laugh. Akira had told her and Ryuji about Leblanc, enough for her to know that katsu buns weren't on the menu. "You dumbass, the owner's leaving you _breakfast_ or whatever. He'd keep his own lunch at home. Or if he brought a lunch to the cafe, he'd - he'd write his name on it, or something. He'd tell you not to eat it."

  
Akira started to unwrap it, putting on a supremely unimpressed face as he studied the bun carefully. "You're right. It'll be much easier to divide this three ways than four."

  
Ryuji crossed his legs and leaned back on his hands. "Panther's right. You are a dumbass. But I also want a bite of your katsu bun, please."

  
She did too, but. "So that's been in your sweaty pocket all day, huh."

  
He gave her a withering look. "How would my _pockets_ get sweaty? And it's been in my bag until we came in here, for your information."

  
"Oh, so not sweaty, but under a cat's nasty little puddypaws all day instead," Ryuji observed. He and Ann grinned at each other across the campfire.

  
"It's _wrapped_ \- Fox, now you get half a katsu bun. Lucky you."

  
"I have always wanted to try a katsu bun," deadpanned Yusuke, and it struck them funny, though she could never quite decide if he'd been making a joke or not. They giggled around the campfire as Akira studied the messy bun, folded around a too-large pork cutlet and already trailing crumbs of breading and shredded lettuce.

  
"This isn't gonna split," he apologized. "We'll have to share germs."

  
Ann and Ryuji shrugged at each other. It wouldn't be the first time. And if Akira was fine with it, then so was she. They all looked at Yusuke, who didn't seem to see any significance to the question and nodded.

  
"Save me a bite." He passed it from Ryuji, to Yusuke, to Ann, who handed it back to Akira as she chewed blissfully. Its journey from fridge to schoolbag to Metaverse pocket hadn't hurt it a bit. It tasted amazing.

  
\----------

  
Ryuji mentioning Morgana's nasty little puddypaws seemed to have reminded Akira of the fact that he was missing. "Do you think we should look again?"

  
The smile was wiped from Ryuji's face. He was probably thinking of his mom, though, not Morgana. "I wanna check outside again. Maybe we'll see him on the way."

  
At least she'd had a few minutes off her feet. She stood, then looked down at the fire. "Are we supposed to do something with... this?"

  
Akira inhaled and opened his mouth, prepared to disseminate important fire knowledge, but Ryuji cut him off. "Should be fine."

  
Even Yusuke had misgivings about that idea. "Surely we should - "

  
"Should, be, fine," Ryuji said again, very carefully.

  
Oh. Duh. "Yeah, you're right. We can just leave it like this," she said.

  
Yusuke and Akira got it and nodded too, and they all put their masks back on and trooped out.

  
Back to the skylight, where they could still hear the thunder, an assault on their eardrums. This time Ryuji insisted on checking the front door, too, and it was just the same - fat white lightning sizzling down to the parking lot, more concentrated and aggressive than any thunderstorm she'd ever seen in the real world. It was clear that crossing the parking lot like that would be a suicide mission.

  
Ryuji scowled and slunk back to the safe room in a foul mood.

  
Masks off again, each of them copying whoever did it first. Now that they'd gotten a taste of having them off inside the Palace, it had started to feel annoying to wear hers any longer than she had to. She grabbed Ryuji's oversized collar and wrenched it back and forth, moving him side to side in his swivelling office chair. "It won't be so bad. She'll just ground you a little, I bet."

  
He swatted her hand away. "I ain't worried about gettin' in trouble. I'm worried about her... worryin'."

  
Well. That was a distinct possibility. She didn't have an answer for that.

  
Yusuke had been the last to enter the safe room and had taken his time wandering over. He looked over her head. "Our campfire!"

  
It was out. In fact, the carpet that they had built the fire upon was whole and unsinged. The remaining scraps of wooden frames and oil paintings that they had been saving to burn later were still stacked up against the wall, but all traces of the fire itself were gone. No ashes, and no smoke, either. She hadn't even noticed, probably because she was so used to seeing the safe room as it was now - dim and closetlike, and decidedly campfire-free.

  
"Why would it... " Akira trailed off.

  
Ryuji clearly didn't care. "Cognitive shit."

  
Yusuke knelt to paw through the pieces of canvas. "What a shame. I was looking forward to burning this one." He seemed to realize how confused they were and clarified, "This one is one of mine."

  
He held it up: a dappled, sunlit forest path in electric blue and green with strange touches of red here and there. It was pretty, if a little unsettling, and even she could tell it was a good painting.

  
"You been burnin' your own paintings this _whole time?"_

  
Yusuke was the reserved, aloof type, except when he wasn't. She caught just a suggestion of the sneer he'd shown when he had awoken Goemon - a twitch of one eyebrow, a disdainful toss of his head - though she could tell it wasn't directed at them. "My paintings outside the Palace are lining Madarame's pockets as we speak. But I will decide what happens to these."

  
He set the painting aside, as if it deserved all the care in the world until its number was up.

  
Akira cut in abruptly. "Were you thinking of burning it the whole time? While we were out checking on the storm just now?"

  
"Yes. Or, more accurately, I was cataloguing what was left to burn in my mind. I suppose that - " Yusuke spoke more slowly, arriving at the same conclusion as he said it aloud. " - I was not thinking of the fire itself."

  
This was getting complicated. "What, we have to keep thinking of the fire or it'll disappear?" she asked. That could explain why the fire was gone, but the pieces of paintings and their frames remained.

  
But there wasn't an answer. All they could do was sit in the gloom and shrug at each other.

  
"Maybe it's more like a time limit. Thing," Ryuji suggested.

  
It was starting to sink in that they were stuck here for the time being. "Aggh, what _ever,_ I don't care about the fire," she said as she shoved her office chair back and shot to her feet. "We - we have to sleep here now!" She wanted to yell about it, to hit something, but standing reminded her that her feet still hurt, so she sank back into her chair and sulked.

  
One by one, they looked at the couch. Ryuji launched himself out of his chair and onto the couch like his life depended on it.

  
"Oh fuck _off,_ Ry- _Skull,_ you don't just automatically get it - "

  
"You just wish you thought of it first, Panther - "

  
Akira was giving Ryuji a Look. "Rock paper scissors would be more fair, I think," he said evenly.

  
Yusuke won. They all picked a spot on the thinly carpeted floor, as though it mattered where they chose, and Yusuke stretched out on the couch.

  
In the quiet, the sounds of him shifting restlessly seemed very loud. Ann craned her neck to peer up at him and watched him lay on his back, though that resulted in his legs hanging right off the end at an awkward angle. He laid on his side instead, but then his bent knees jutted out into thin air. He tried laying on his back again, seemed to catch them all staring at him, and let out a resigned sigh. "Panther, you may have the couch."

  
"Aw, what - "

  
She agreed with Ryuji, actually. "Why, because I'm a girl?"

  
He blinked. "Yes?"

  
She'd always hated this kind of thing. "I'm not made of glass. We'll just - " As she was speaking, Yusuke rose to his feet to give up the couch, and his ass had barely left the cushions before Akira had claimed it like a baseball player sliding to home base.

  
"W-what happened to rock paper scissors?!" she sputtered.

  
Time to take out the trash. She and Ryuji nodded to each other, then got to their feet. Ryuji took his ankles. She took his wrists. Together they swung Akira right off the couch and set him down in front of it in a pile as he laughed and laughed, and she realized he'd never intended to stay there. He was just being an instigating little shit, as usual.

  
Another round of rock paper scissors, this time between only the three of them, and Akira won it anyway.

  
"See? See? You should've just left me there!" He scrambled back up to the couch and stretched out, making a show of how comfortable it was.

  
She and Ryuji rolled their eyes at each other in disgust and returned to the floor, the two of them and Yusuke giving each other as much space as they could. The floor was hard, and even though the fire they'd started should have warmed the air, the safe room was just cool enough to be uncomfortable for sleeping. She was sufficiently exhausted to only have the time to wonder if they could all wish a thermostat into existence before falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the katsu bun has been passed around the ceremonial fire, the ritual is complete. I pronounce you all poly


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things will get explicit from now on. In this chapter, Ann deals with the harsh realities of being a morosexual

**Day 2**

When Ann opened her eyes an indeterminate amount of time later, she thought she'd rolled out of bed onto the floor.

  
It was so grim in her room. Darker than morning, but a lot lighter than it should have been at night with the lights off. And she could feel harsh carpet scratching her cheek, much rougher than her fluffy white rug at home would have been.

  
She sat up and counted three sleeping bodies, two on the floor like her and one on the -

  
Oh. Safe room. Right.

  
She felt so _stiff._ She might have taken to sleeping on the floor better if she were a futon girl, but she was used to her soft, Western style mattress at home. She stumbled to her feet, trying to be quiet, but several vertebrae in her back popped loudly and she woke up Akira, facedown on the couch.

  
"Grum," he mumbled, motionless.

  
"Yeah, grum," she agreed. She stretched her arms over her head and arched her back until her entire body trembled, then angled her hips as far to the right as she could before switching to the left. She'd started twisting her back when she caught Ryuji watching her, still lying on the floor.

  
"Perv."

  
He grinned. "If you're gonna put on a show, I - should - " He yawned wide enough to make his jaw crack audibly. " - look, shouldn't I?"

  
She kicked the sole of his boot just to hear him groan and sat down at the table to wait for the others to get up.

  
They'd all fallen asleep in different positions. Ryuji was on his side, facing her at the table, with his legs bent at the knee and kicked far apart, like he'd been running in his sleep like a dog. Akira had fallen asleep right on his face, somehow, with one foot just hanging off the edge of the couch, the other leg spread wide and jutting off the side, and with one of his hands trailing on the floor. And Yusuke looked like a corpse, flat on his back with his hands folded neatly over his belly. He was the tallest, with the broadest shoulders, but asleep he took up the least amount of space.

  
Ryuji looked as stiff as she felt. He started to get to his feet but made it only to his knees and elbows. He stayed like that for a minute or so, his forehead resting on the carpet. "We're still... here, huh."

  
At first she'd considered being nice and quiet in order to let the others sleep in, but as she moved around she was quickly realizing how badly she needed to pee. She might as well talk, then. "Yeah. Looks that way."

  
Ryuji was still addressing the floor, making his voice come out muffled. "I sorta thought I was dreamin'."

  
"You dream of me stretching, huh?"

  
He laughed and got up the rest of the way, joining her at the table. "Think you dream of me dreamin' about you, maybe."

  
She squirmed. Akira was yawning into the crook of his arm on the couch, but Yusuke was still breathing slow and deep, like he was just as comfortable here as he would be at home.

  
She kicked her legs frantically, swinging them beneath the table. Why couldn't safe rooms have -

  
"Why're you - " Ryuji grinned. "Ah."

  
She decided to end that conversation before it started. "Good morning, Fox!" she nearly shouted, making both Akira and Yusuke jolt. Akira only twitched his feet, glaring at her, but Yusuke shot upright to a sitting position, staring at his surroundings and looking bewildered.

  
"Why don't you just _go - "_

  
She rolled her eyes at Ryuji. "Yeah, and get chopped up by Shadows, right? I really don't want my last thought to be about how much I have to pee."

  
Yusuke didn't seem to like that kind of talk. He winced and turned sideways, still sitting, so he wouldn't have to face her and started fixing his hair.

  
She didn't have _time_ for embarrassment. Yusuke was at least half up, but Akira was still horizontal, so she marched over to the couch and sat on his back. "Let's _go,_ let's _go,_ let's _go - "_

  
"I have to piss _too,_ get _off - "_

  
At least they were in agreement. They put their masks on and filed out of the safe room, Ann leading the charge, until they'd reached the museum washrooms. They managed to avoid the guards and staff on the way there - lucky for her, because she suspected that having to take out a couple Shadows in this kind of state would have been beyond her limit. She was just about running at that point, her heels clicking on the glossy floor, and she was so focused on her goal that she almost missed hearing the guys laugh at her.

  
She grimaced at herself in the washroom mirror. Let them laugh. They could just unzip, top to bottom, and go. She had a whole process she needed to figure out.

  
She had one zipper easily within reach, the one just below her cleavage, but the back zipper, the one attached to her tail, seemed to be the way to go. That way she'd be unzipping the least amount of real estate. She _was_ out in the open, after all. Now she just had to -

  
She contorted herself in front of the mirror in the common area of the washroom, trying to figure out which angle was best. Her suit was skintight - tighter than skintight, really, because it was tight enough to press into her in certain places - and there were some very important parts that she really did not feel like getting caught in a zipper through her underwear today. She finally settled for standing with her legs spread far apart, her hips angled as far forward as they would go, and her chin buried in her own cleavage so she could see what she was doing. Probably the least model-like pose she would ever make, now that she thought about it. She grabbed her tail with one hand and the very minimal amount of spare material her suit had to offer with the other, holding her breath as she slowly unzipped herself as far away from her body as she could.

  
It was nervewracking. Her mood wasn't helped any by hearing the three guys next door talking and laughing, like pissing next to each other at the urinals was the greatest time they'd ever had in their lives. She simultaneously felt annoyed and a bit lonely.

  
It would have been nice to have another girl on the team. Four guys, if you counted Morgana, made things feel more than a little uneven, especially when he started up on his Lady Ann act and Ryuji and Akira decided to team up to tease her.

  
For some reason that put a strange thought in her head, and she froze, one hand clutching her suit at her hip and the other still holding the tail between her legs. Her bladder was insistent, though, so she told herself to smarten up and finished unzipping herself from the small of her back to her bellybutton without incident.

  
She caught sight of herself in the mirror, hunched over and graceless like this, and froze again.

  
She didn't have any _panties?_

  
The fact that there wasn't a single other actual woman who might need to use the washroom didn't matter. The fact that she could still hear the other Thieves talking a safe distance away next door didn't matter, either. She slapped her gloved hand over her mouth and squeaked in mortification at the thought of someone finding her like this, not just in a kinky porn outfit but without anything on _underneath,_ too, and half ran, half fell backwards into a stall hard enough to make the door slam and swing back outwards again before she could close it.

  
Thoughts like that would have to wait. She peed for minutes, it felt like, and peeled off her gloves so she could finish up. She flushed and stood upright, then zipped herself up again just as carefully.

  
Not just a latex fucking catsuit but no _panties,_ too. Jesus.

  
It made sense, if you thought about it in a porn kind of way. Easy access or whatever. And it sucked to admit it, but if she'd been wearing panties, there wouldn't have been any way to do what she'd just done without taking the whole thing off every time. They had just never spent enough time in the Metaverse for her to discover it until now.

  
But it highlighted everything she hated about it.

  
Her latex catsuit was tight enough to squeeze her uncomfortably when she needed to crouch behind corners or crawl through ducts. She'd often felt it dig into her knees and elbows. And the zippers were _ridiculous._ The tightness was one thing - Yusuke's and Ryuji's suits were a little tight, too, though theirs had nothing on hers - but the _zippers -_

  
She could've just had a single one from chest to waist like Yusuke and Ryuji did. She could've just had a top and _pants,_ like Akira did. Instead she was dressed like some crazy, fetishy puzzle, only a thin latex layer between the air and her skin for some guy to figure out and open up, and she - she just hated it.

  
The fact that her own mind had done this to her was the worst part. Apparently she _wanted_ some guy to figure her out and -

  
She decided that that was enough of _that_ particular train of thought for today and scooped up her gloves from the floor. She washed her hands, then splashed her face, fixing errant smudges of what was left of her eyeliner, before she pulled her gloves back on and headed out.

  
\----------

  
They were all waiting for her, of course, slouched up against the wall just outside the washrooms and zeroing in on her as soon as she appeared.

  
"You fall in?" Ryuji asked.

  
She wasn't in the mood for it and ignored him. "Are we going to look for Mona again?" she asked Akira coolly.

  
Yusuke couldn't look at her, like he was so freaked out by having to admit to a bodily function - or by having to admit that _she_ had bodily functions, maybe - that it was easier to look at the floor.

  
God. She felt an intense spasm of exasperation at all three of them, brief but vicious, then suppressed it just as quickly, telling herself that she was just crabby from having to sleep on the floor. Akira hadn't done anything, and Yusuke was just sort of weird, and Ryuji was just Ryuji. They hadn't put her in her suit, and they hadn't put her in that safe room, either.

  
Ryuji interrupted before Akira could answer. "Outside first. The storm. Let's check outside first."

  
They were off to a bad start. It felt like it was going to be one of those days where neither of them would be able to get a word out without setting the other off. "Seriously?" she snapped, knowing it was the wrong tone but not caring enough to reel it in. "You'd just leave him in here? He's your _teammate - "_

  
"You look like my mom with your hands on your hips like that," he fired back, because he knew how much she hated that. He knew her well enough to save up all the little things she hated, like a rainy day fund, just so he could use them on her when it was one of those days.

  
A few things had changed between them since the last time he'd said that, though, and it made her grin fiercely. Certain victory before they'd even really gotten started. He saw it coming and pleaded with her not to use it - she saw it in his eyes - but she'd never been very good at taking her finger off the button.

  
"Oh, you think so, huh? You think I look like your mom? Did you think I looked like your mom when you had your tongue in my mouth and your hands on my - "

  
"Aggh, _stop - "_ His mask was already covering most of his face, but he covered the eyeholes with his hands, too.

  
"Because that's pretty nasty, if you think I look like your mom. I guess I better - "

  
Yusuke looked outright appalled. It was enough to make her stop on her own. She'd made her point, anyway. Akira must have thought they were tempted to keep going, though, because he stepped between them and gave them each a flick on the earlobe, since he couldn't get at their foreheads with their masks in the way. "Knock it off. There's Shadows around."

  
Ryuji seemed to care more that Akira was displeased with him than how she or Yusuke felt. It was rare for Akira to say even as much as he had just now. "I wasn't gonna leave him," he backpedalled, facing Akira. "But I got other people to worry about, you know? I was gonna check in with my mom and then come back to help you guys look for him as soon as I got ungrounded."

  
"That could be _days,"_ Ann said. She slowly straightened up and took her hands off of her hips.

  
Their faces all fell. She'd been referring to how long Ryuji would be grounded for, but saying it out loud made them all think of the more immediate problem.

  
Days. It really could be days.

  
Well. Maybe they weren't all thinking of the matter at hand - or, if they were, maybe they weren't all of the same opinion. Yusuke no longer looked appalled, or even upset, really. Just a neutral expression that could mean a lot of different things. She still had a hard time figuring him out most of the time.

  
Without further argument, Akira led them all back toward the hallway beneath the skylight. The weather report didn't exactly help morale. White lightning strobed across the black sky overhead, just as it had before, and she could feel her hair stirring again.

  
"I'm gonna get up there and stick my head out," Ryuji decided. He crouched, ready to spring upwards, but Ann and Akira grabbed his arms just in time.

  
_"Don't,"_ she growled. He got on her nerves like no one else she'd ever known, but she didn't want him _dead._

  
"You've got _metal_ on you - you'd be fried, you idiot!" Akira's cool, don't-give-a-shit facade was down and she could see his eyes wide and scared behind his mask. He was actually worried for him.

  
Ryuji saw it too, and he looked scared to see Akira scared. "Okay, _okay - "_ He wriggled out of their grasp and backed up, out of the white square of intermittent light cast by the lightning through the skylight overhead, as if to make it clear he wasn't going to just make a break for it after all.

  
Yusuke had hung back, restrained as usual, but when he spoke it wasn't even about Ryuji. "I think we should make finding Mona our priority," he said firmly.

  
Ryuji was still on edge and snorted. "He's just hidin' somewhere for attention, I bet."

  
"He's been gone for almost a whole day," Akira said quietly.

  
That didn't sound right. "Just overnight, Joker. I don't like it either, but - " she said.

  
"I feel like it ain't even been that long," Ryuji argued, raising his voice a little to be heard over the thunder. Just to be contrary, she thought, until she got a better look at his face and saw he was serious. "Like, don't get me wrong, I wanna get back, but. I don't think we even slept eight hours. I think it's just... nighttime, still."

  
They all looked up and out the skylight at the black, then brilliant white, then black again sky, as if that would tell them anything. The sun never shone over Madarame's Palace, even when it was still the afternoon outside the Metaverse.

  
"Regardless," Yusuke continued, "I suggest redoubling our efforts to find Mona, both for his sake and for our own. He may have knowledge about the Metaverse's rules that we have simply never thought to ask him about."

  
He could be practical. Sometimes. "You think he'd be able to get the storm to stop... ?" she asked.

  
He nodded, then shrugged, as lost as the rest of them were.

  
Now that he'd been so openly against it, Ryuji was incapable of admitting that finding Morgana was a good idea. He bent his knee and grabbed his foot behind him, pulling on it to stretch his thigh muscles. "A workout's a workout, I guess."

  
She scrunched up her nose, then laughed when she caught Yusuke making an almost identical face. A kindred spirit who did not particularly enjoy exercise for exercise's sake. "What, are we _running?_ Why?" she asked.

  
Akira laid down the law. "We are not running."

  
"Well we didn't find him yesterday bein' all _careful."_

  
Akira looked openly annoyed, which was rare for him. He was probably still a little keyed up from having to just about tackle Ryuji to keep him from getting frizzled like a bug in a bugzapper. "We're still in a Palace, okay? Just because we were stuck here overnight, or whatever, doesn't mean we should let down our guard."

  
He made a good point. But she knew how Ryuji felt. The atmosphere in the musuem did feel different, somehow. "It sort of does feel like a - a field trip, doesn't it," she said.

  
Yusuke startled her with a radiant smile, there and gone again out of nowhere, and she remembered that he was a good looking guy. You could forget, sometimes, when the mood was dragging, like it had been lately, or if he was lost in a monologue about contrasting shapes or whatever. But the smile reminded her, even if he did bring up art again. "The field trips to museums were always my favourites." The smile went back into hiding. "Though calling this gaudy display a true museum is an insult, of course."

  
Akira nodded politely, the kind of nod you gave to show you'd heard someone, if nothing else, and put things back on the right track. "Come on. Our usual stealth tactics, guys." Then, to Ryuji: "Look, if you're antsy, we'll go do situps in the safe room when we get back, okay? I'll spot you."

  
"You don't need a spotter for _situps,_ for fuck's sake - "

  
Dumb jocks. Or a dumb jock and his wannabe-jock friend, maybe. She looked at Yusuke, jerked her head towards Ryuji and Akira, and rolled her eyes, but it got intercepted by Ryuji.

  
"Yeah, yeah," he mocked, sidling up and poking her in the belly through her red catsuit. "You think you couldn't use some situps, too?

  
It was one of those days.

  
Asshole. She hissed in a breath between her clenched teeth, prepared to retaliate with maximum force, but Yusuke surprised her. He didn't hang back and stay silent like he usually did during their squabbles, and he didn't tell Ryuji to treat her more like a lady or some shit, either, which she was unfortunately coming to expect to hear from him sometime soon. Instead Yusuke stepped forward and took some of the heat for her, without making it about the parts she had or didn't have. "Is there a mandatory exercise regimen for the Phantom Thieves? I hope not." He looked at her, and even as he was saying the words, she couldn't get over it. She'd never have expected this kind of stunt from someone like him, not in a thousand years. "I feel we sweat enough already simply by fighting Shadows."

  
"N-no, but we don't gotta get lazy just cuz we're stuck in here - " But Ryuji sounded like he was going to back off.

  
She couldn't decide how to feel about it. It was _nice,_ or she thought it was _supposed_ to be nice, but she also didn't like the implication that Yusuke thought she couldn't give as good as she got. That she needed to be _protected._ She'd been taking Ryuji's shit for years, now, and - and that was what annoyed her the most, she realized. When she and Ryuji got into it, it usually went on until one of them stormed off, fed up, and then they'd both be prickly for a little while until something new came up and they could pretend to forget what had happened. It had never ended with one of them backing down so quickly, not once. Not until she'd had some guy step in on her behalf, anyway.

  
For some reason she felt a little better to see how annoyed Akira looked. He took Ryuji's arm and yanked him a step or two down the hallway, further into the museum, and that was that. The static in the air released her hair as she followed, and Ryuji let the issue drop after that, too.

  
\----------

  
She liked Morgana a lot, but her worries that he was trapped somewhere, or worse, were slowly being overtaken by the shitty mood she'd been in since waking up in the safe room.

  
Ryuji was happy, at least. Akira had voted for stealth, but changed his mind halfway through after he realized how much Ryuji needed a diversion, so they'd switched to assault mode. Wiping out Shadows methodically, room by room, was good exercise. Soon they were all sweating and dishevelled, and Akira had a new supply of Shadow lint for tinder and yen for equipment in his pockets, but when they called out, Morgana remained unwilling or unable to answer.

  
Everything was easier in the Metaverse, but there were still limits. She and Yusuke propped themselves up against the wall in a poorly lit back corridor, catching their breath, and Ryuji sank into a squat across the way from them. And Akira liked to keep up appearances, but she noticed him yanking on the lapels of his leather coat, trying to cool himself down.

  
The soles of her feet were absolutely throbbing, crammed as they were into her too-tight, ridiculous boots. She eased herself to the floor so she could stretch her legs out in front of her.

  
"Think we could use a break, huh?" Akira asked, and as they all nodded, he gave up on looking cool and shrugged out of his heavy coat, revealing his grey vest and bare arms beneath. She'd never seen his arms before, she realized. They were surprisingly muscular - not chiselled, or anything, and his forearms weren't all veiny like some guys' arms were when they got muscly, but they were definitely toned and pleasantly curvy.

  
Tired though he was, he still caught her admiring him. She couldn't catch a break. He sent a grin her way, a patented Joker grin, and she heard him laugh when she hurriedly looked away.

  
She had other concerns, anyway, having to do with food. It wasn't that she was hungry. It was the opposite. "Shouldn't we need to eat again? By now?"

  
Yusuke looked surprised, but she had some idea of what his eating habits were like now and knew he wasn't the right person to ask. Ryuji and Akira were both considering what she'd said. "Yeah, you'd think so, right?" Akira said. "But I don't really feel all that hungry."

  
"All we had last night was that katsu bun," Ryuji pointed out. "And that was just a bite each, really. So how come we're still full?"

  
It did seem to support Ryuji's theory that they'd been in here for less than a day. Less than half a day, really. But it felt much longer to her at the same time. "Dunno, but. We're still gonna need to eat at some point. We can't rely on Joker's pocket snacks forever," she said.

  
"You loved my pocket snacks last night!" he protested, pretending like his feelings were hurt. But she could tell that he agreed.

  
Akira finally admitted defeat and joined her and Ryuji on the floor, and, with a grateful sigh, as though he'd been given permission, Yusuke did the same next to her. She could see him tucking his feet neatly to the side out of the corner of her eye. "If we are camping, we may have to forage for our food," he said, though he didn't sound too upset at the prospect.

  
"The fuck are we gonna eat in a museum?"

  
There was a brief but pregnant silence as they weighed their options.

  
Akira opened his mouth to make his suggestion, but they all shot him down before he could get a word out.

  
"Nope. Don't like that idea."

  
"I would need to be in dire straits indeed before I would consider eating a Shadow."

  
"Ugh - they _talk_ \- you can't eat somethin' that _talks - "_

  
Sometimes Akira liked to argue just to argue. "They're not _people._ They're not even alive. They're more like. Thought processes, or something. They're imaginary, really."

  
Ryuji clapped him on the shoulder. "Cool. More for you, man. You grill up your Shadow steaks and lemme know how it goes."

  
"What do you want on your tombstone?" she asked.

  
"'Here lies Joker. He ate some shit he shouldn't have. Now he's dead. Amen,'" Ryuji suggested.

  
"What kind of tombstone is _that - "_ she sputtered, laughing.

  
While Akira and Ryuji were distracted by the finer points of Shadow cuisine, she took a second to peek at Yusuke. She had resolved to include him more, after all. He wasn't joining in or laughing himself, but he didn't look annoyed at the turn their conversation had taken, either. He was smiling to himself, looking pleased, even, and when he realized she was looking at him, his smile just got bigger.

  
She'd been stuck in here with them for too long. Her emotions were pogoing up and down like crazy, so to cover up how flustered she felt, she decided to get things back on track. "Anyway. Who says there isn't a vending machine somewhere, right?" she asked Yusuke.

  
"Mm." Yusuke looked doubtful. "I have never seen a single vending machine in an art museum. I would imagine the staff would not want to encourage visitors to bring food near the exhibits."

  
That didn't mean that there wasn't one here, though. "But couldn't the guards have one? I bet they do, where the visitors can't go. In their break room, or, like. In one of their offices, maybe."

  
Akira stopped shoving Ryuji long enough to nod at her. "Yeah, that makes sense. I bet they have a vending machine for snacks near their office, where they watch the cameras."

  
Two out of four. She wasn't sure it would work outside the safe room, but they could try. She and Akira stared at Ryuji, who picked it up quickly enough. "Right? They gotta have snacks 'n shit. Caffeine to keep 'em awake, too, if they're just lookin' at cameras all night 'n day."

  
Yusuke was last. He wavered the longest, apparently having a moral opposition to the idea of food being permitted in the same building as artwork, but he saw the sense in it, too. "I think that management would allow the employees to have a vending machine, yes," he said carefully.

  
They heard the sound of matter condensing, or of air being displaced, maybe, and that was it. There weren't any Shadows in sight, so the cognition of the Palace must have changed - never mind the fact that they were out in the Palace proper, not in the safe room where cognition was weakest.

  
They stared at each other.

  
"I wish I had a pony," declared Akira.

  
"I wish you had a pony too," she said. "My feet wouldn't be ready to fall off, for one thing."

  
"Oh, you think he'd let _you_ ride it, huh?" Ryuji gave her a nasty grin. "Joker, what's the weight limit for - "

  
"I wish Joker had a pony," Yusuke blurted out, looking uncomfortable at the prospect of another squabble.

  
Nothing.

  
"'I wish Joker had a pony!'" Ryuji said quickly, apparently testing out whether the exact wording mattered, but there was no sign of a cognitive change this time.

  
"Why's a vending machine allowed, but not a pony?" Akira asked.

  
Ryuji grinned at her in particular, even though he'd just taken a dig at her, before he switched sides with ease and gave Yusuke the same treatment. He turned to face him. "Probly for the best. Maybe the museum's afraid you'd just fuckin'... eat it."

  
She hated that she kept laughing. He had somehow found a way to be more aggravating than usual today, and she wanted to be mad at him. But Ryuji was funny, too, or he could be, and it was easier to laugh than to keep a straight face.

  
"The difference is likely just that a pony would wreak havoc inside a museum," Yusuke said reasonably, choosing to ignore the joke. Or maybe it was that he didn't see it as a joke at all. "A vending machine is plausible for where we are, or for the cognition of the Palace ruler. But a pony is not."

  
Akira flung out his arms to stretch and managed to hit Ryuji in the shoulder in a way that hardly looked accidental, dodging the light swing Ryuji sent back at him and getting to his feet all in one fluid motion. She was starting to think that smug look on his face was part of his Joker outfit. "Anyway," he said. "Guess I'll live if I can't have a pony. Let's go find our snacks."

  
He was a good leader. Considerate. He'd given in to Ryuji on the way over and had let him get in some fights for exercise; this time, maybe because she'd complained about her feet hurting, he stuck to his guns and led them through the security offices in stealth mode, avoiding combat as much as he could.

  
Not that it was always possible to slip through undetected. A guard patrolling the back corridors caught them unawares, and after Akira removed its mask, they were in the thick of it. This one wasn't so tough, though. She sprayed it with bullets, and Ryuji brought his pipe down with that sickening crunch she always hated. Akira sent out gusts of wind, a howling, sucking storm concentrated within the narrow hallway, and Yusuke darted forward, prepared to slash and sever all that stood in his way. But today was not his lucky day. Tough or not, the Shadow reared up tall on its hind legs and dodged, not only avoiding Yusuke's katana but bringing its gnarled, taloned paw down right across his back as he struggled in vain to evade it.

  
A lucky hit. The Shadow knocked Yusuke flat, his head hitting the floor in the process, and he stayed there on the floor, motionless. After a long ten seconds, he balanced on his knees and elbows as he blinked slowly, trying to bring the world back into focus. She caught a glimpse of the slashes the Shadow had left in his back and whimpered with sympathy pain, then readied Carmen to hurl a healing spell his way, but -

  
The way Yusuke was crouched put his ass on display, and she caught Akira staring just as he caught _her_ staring.

  
She had an alibi though. She was looking at Yusuke because she was targeting him with magic. What was Akira's excuse? "What are you _doing?"_ she growled as she bathed Yusuke in light.

  
She'd caught Akira off balance, something so rare that it made her do a double take. His face was red. "Oh good, you got to it before I could," he said, as if he'd only had healing on his mind.

  
And they said she was a bad actor? "Bull _shit,"_ she called out merrily, and helped Yusuke to his feet. The Shadow went down quickly enough, and the way Akira kept avoiding looking her in the face for the time it took to find their vending machine was almost enough to make her forget the way her feet ached.

  
\----------

  
Finally.

  
There it was, in an out of the way corner that looked like a kitchenette slash break room, just like they'd imagined. A vending machine that had a weird mix of salty snacks, candy and hot coffee, of all things, all in the same machine. Did that mean that the Metaverse was so perceptive that it could pick up on what each of them wanted, specifically, even when it was left unspoken? Maybe it worked that way when they didn't contradict each other, at least. The coffee had to be thanks to Akira, and she'd been thinking of candy when they had all collaborated on the vending machine. Ryuji liked salty crunchy junk, usually. So -

  
"You don't like snacks?" she asked Yusuke. How could that be possible? Maybe he just liked some of the same things they did.

  
She'd never seen him smile as much as she'd seen him smile today and yesterday, she realized. Was he smiling at her, specifically, or was he just in a good mood? "I'm looking forward to trying them," he said. "But." And now he was going pink, she noticed, a weird look for him. Cute, though. "I think I'll need another break first."

  
They were just standing around, so what was there to take a break from? He looked embarrassed enough to remind her of when he'd been looking the same way as he waited with the others outside the washrooms - oh. A _bathroom_ break, he meant. "Uh. Go ahead? We'll wait."

  
Akira was just tripping all over himself to make a move, of course. "He shouldn't go alone," he announced. "I'll go with you, Fox."

  
"Thank you, Joker."

  
"Damn, Joker, have some class - " she teased.

  
"Hmm? I can't _possibly_ imagine what you are referring to." He'd regained his composure. He tilted his head to the side, daring her to say it while making it very clear that if she outed him for looking at Yusuke's ass in the middle of a fight, he'd do the same thing right back. She nodded - touche, Akira - and carefully filed it away for later consideration. Maybe there'd be some way she could tease him about this later.

  
"Dumbass," Ryuji said, as Akira and Yusuke left to backtrack to the washrooms. "Fox, I mean. He pretended he didn't have to go, this morning. Before. Whatever time of the day it was."

  
"What's his deal?"

  
"Dunno."

  
"Joker definitely didn't have to go, though. Just now," she observed.

  
"Huh?"

  
"You must've missed it. You were actually paying attention to the Shadow," she said as she leaned her shoulder against the warm, humming vending machine. She could at least lift one foot off the floor this way. "Joker's probably all over him already."

  
She'd been trying to figure out how things were between Akira and Ryuji for a while. They were pretty handsy with each other, overall, and it seemed to her that they'd gotten very close, very quickly. But Ryuji didn't give her anything to go by. Not the jealous reaction she'd been expecting, anyway. He just lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. "Probly. Well, maybe. Joker's into him. Dunno if Fox is like that."

  
That was a valid point. "He's been really smiley at me lately." Well, Akira too, to be honest, but that wasn't really a new development.

  
Ryuji gave her this leer, and she knew what would come next. "Dunno how he feels about _Joker,_ but Fox is definitely into you."

  
Duh. She'd have to have been blind not to notice how Yusuke looked at her. She wasn't exactly convinced that the whole nude modelling thing had been an oblivious artist mixup either. She opened her mouth to agree with him but then stopped.

  
Why was she being _nice_ to him? Ryuji didn't deserve that, not after his douchey comments about her weight today. The way he'd compared her to his mom, too. She brought out a little of the snark she'd been saving up for him ever since. "Fox is hot. Maybe I'll take him up on it," she said flippantly.

  
He was so easy to rile up. He pushed off of the wall he'd been leaning against, across the hall from her, and took a step toward her. "Yeah? You into scrawny dudes now?"

  
She felt a mix of frustration at his predictability - at the way he _was;_ really, she was frustrated with Ryuji because he was Ryuji - and a different kind of frustration, too. It made her ease into a more comfortable position, one shoulder still propped against the vending machine and the opposite hip cocked, even as she wracked her brain for more ways to piss him off. "Mm. Not _that_ scrawny," she lied. "He's tall. He's got good hair, too."

  
Watching Ryuji slink closer, step by reluctant step, like he didn't have a say in the matter, made her feel a bit better.

  
He was just a couple feet away now, leaning up against the wall beside her. He laughed, something that was probably meant to sound mocking, but it didn't. It sounded fake. "What, you're gonna go for that dumb old line? 'Tall, dark 'n handsome'?"

  
Her heart was hammering in her chest. She gave him her back, casually, as though leaning against the vending machine with both forearms was more comfortable. "You don't think he is? I think he is."

  
He took a step closer, and now he was close enough for her to feel him. Just a quick brush of his leg against hers. "I'm tall," he protested, and she knew by his voice that she had him.

  
She waited for him to follow that up with something further, and when he didn't, she just had to break character and laugh. She couldn't help it. "That's it? You're tall?"

  
He was too distracted to mind. He finally touched her, then, just his hand on her hip, but he took it back right away and skinned off his gloves first. Now he stood behind her, one hand on each of her hips, motionless and silent until he remembered she'd said something. "Yeah. I'm tall."

  
_"I'm_ tall. Fox is - tall. You're just. Average."

  
His hands moved. Finally. She tried to catch her breath and realized that from just this much contact, she was hopelessly wet. Not that it mattered, locked away inside her suit as she was. He stepped closer, his boots scuffling the hard floor, and leaned his chest against her back as he slipped his hands higher and higher. "Average, huh," he said, his voice low.

  
God. He was so slow. It was maddening. Her stomach had begun to do lazy flips as she waited, and she decided to speed things up. She leaned more of her weight against her forearms and arched her back right into him, grinding her ass against him. The little choked gasp he made just encouraged her.

  
He brought his hands up and squeezed her breasts through her suit, taking his time, and it was so good that she couldn't help but let out a low whine. He seemed to take that as a challenge and kneaded her there, slipping both hands right inside the cleavage cutout of her suit until his fingers were around her nipples, brushing them with his callused hands until she couldn't stay still a second longer. The slippery latex of her suit creaked against itself, but didn't make a sound against the fabric of his. She pushed back from the vending machine and grinded against him with her ass until she could finally feel what she wanted.

  
His hips snapped forward. She sighed as he pressed his cock against her.

  
It wasn't satisfying in and of itself. Her pussy was throbbing and impatient, and with the way he was standing, she could only feel the bulge of his cock against the slope of her ass. Her suit was tight, but not so tight that she could feel him where she wanted to. But it was his noisy breath in her ear that she was getting off on. It was the way he swallowed with a click as he kept squeezing her breast with one hand even as he trailed the other lower.

  
This stupid fetishy suit had never done her any favours before now. The way it sealed her in tight, almost _painfully_ tight, and put every curve of her on display - that was for everybody else. They all looked. Akira, Ryuji, Yusuke. They looked like it was just part of the deal, like wearing this suit was her choice. Like she'd gone out and bought the thing and chose when to put it on and take it off, instead of having it materialize around her and lock her in every time she stepped foot inside the Metaverse.

  
But this part _was_ her choice. They looked, but she was the one who could crook her finger and beckon them closer. Ryuji didn't start this. She was the one who had laid herself out like this - like an invitation. When she called for him, he came.

  
She listened to him breathe in her ear and smiled.

  
He finally got brave enough to touch her where she'd hoped he would. He traced the track of the zipper between her legs, playing with it lightly, until he suddenly clutched her there with his entire hand, hard, digging his fingers into her through her suit in a way that made her ram her hips backward into him.

  
She _squealed,_ too, and the way he swore in her ear helped erase her own embarrassment at the sound she'd made. "Fuck, Panther... " he groaned.

  
"Fuck, Panther," said Akira in her other ear, agreeably enough, and this time she screamed.

  
Akira was there, right _there,_ standing inches away as if he'd been there all along, feeding yen into the vending machine. "You want a Coke, Skull?" he asked, like they were at school. Like they were eating lunch in the cafeteria, maybe.

  
"N-no. Yeah. Fuck," he stuttered, still a step behind.

  
She drew away from Ryuji, buried her face into her forearms against the side of the vending machine and tried to pull herself together even as she writhed in place, rubbing her thighs together. She was so turned on and so frustrated that she could have cried. She wanted to just - part of her really did just want to keep going. Akira was here? So what? He'd already seen what they were doing. Let him watch. Let him just get a coffee from the vending machine and get _comfortable,_ if he wanted to. Let him do that stupid fucking smirk he was so good at, if that's what he felt like doing, because she and Ryuji had unfinished business -

  
Ryuji had other ideas though. When she turned toward him to see how he was doing, she saw that he'd already sunk to the floor next to her, knees pulled up to hide how hard he was and his bare hands covering his skull mask. He was groaning again, this time with embarrassment.

  
That was that, then.

  
"You guys were fast," she accused.

  
Akira shrugged, bending low to nab the Coke from the machine and rolling it to Ryuji. "Not everybody takes as long as you do."

  
She jumped out from her side of the vending machine, peered around Akira and caught sight of Yusuke on the other side of it, redfaced and suspiciously quiet. Did Akira mean the time she'd taken in the bathroom this morning, or -

  
Now he was just outright laughing at her. She thwapped at his upper arms and shoulders in open handed slaps that sounded like they hurt more than they did, growling in frustration, and he grinned in her face. He yanked her close, kissed her hard and fast, just a peck, and spun her away before she could realize what happened. By the time she figured it out, he was handing her a sweet, noncarbonated drink, the kind she liked. She took it with both hands, and Akira started clinking in more yen for a drink for Yusuke.

  
\----------

  
It was taking a surprisingly long time to buy out the vending machine. Akira had more than enough yen for the job, so that wasn't the issue. It was just an annoyingly repetitive slog.

  
The awkwardness had long since passed, and the impending blowout with Ryuji that she'd been dreading all day had gone up in smoke, as though they'd gotten an argument out of the way without ever raising their voices. Now she could just focus on making the vending machine spit out drinks, snacks and candy, trading off with the others when the whole rigamarole got too tiresome.

  
"Ain't we got enough _now?"_

  
She agreed with Ryuji, though she was still feeling a little fed up with him - the dregs of the fight that hadn't happened - so she kept it to herself.

  
Akira's leather coat had secrets, it seemed. They'd tucked so many bags of junk inside his inner pockets that he rustled when he breathed. But somehow he still kept finding more room. "Keep going. We don't know if this machine will be here again next time or what."

  
"Why would it - "

  
"The fire, remember? It went out when we weren't looking. It _disappeared,"_ Akira corrected himself. "So we'd better load up."

  
It was Yusuke's turn at the machine for a while. He fed it coins, punched in his selection and tossed it to Akira once it appeared. Some kind of cookie thing, this time.

  
Her feet still hurt, but she'd gotten to sit down for some time between her turns at the vending machine, and now her boredom battled the leftover twinges of pain and won. She got up and wandered around the little Shadow break room.

  
Coffee makers. Tea bags, mugs. A fridge. Two long tables with chairs, each of them pushed in and lined up perfectly straight with the others. Neat and tidy.

  
_Everything_ in the museum was neat and tidy. Apparently Madarame ran a tight ship. But something she spotted out of the corner of her eye made her pause.

  
There was a muffin paper on the floor, surrounded by crumbs.

  
Weird. She'd never seen garbage inside of a Palace before. It didn't seem to fit, somehow. Of course, the whole break room was made up out of nothing, pulled into solid form by their imaginations instead of Madarame's cognition, so maybe that had something to do with it. Probably some corner of Ryuji's nasty little mind manifested as food on the floor or something.

  
She wandered back over to the vending machine in the corner of the break room and took over for Yusuke.

  
This was getting ridiculous, though. "Is this even making a difference?!"

  
Ryuji had started jamming bags of mixed nuts and chips into his zip pockets until they bulged out at his hips. He squinted up at the front of the machine. "Yeah, seriously. We didn't even make a dent."

  
Akira looked like he was trying to smuggle snacks into a movie theatre, enough for a small army. "Guess we might as well get back," he said, looking longingly at the vending machine's remaining stock.

  
She and Yusuke didn't have any pockets, so they left their arms empty and were the vanguard instead. They took on Akira's usual role and took turns waving the others forward while the museum staff's backs were turned, holding their breath as Akira did his best to avoid rustling as he snuck around corners.

  
They made it all the way back to their old safe room, the one closest to the entrance, without being caught once. She half expected Morgana to be there, waiting for them in an office chair pulled up to the table, or sitting on the couch and kicking his legs, but the safe room was empty.

  
They each removed their masks, dug into Akira's pockets and dumped handfuls and handfuls of snacks onto the table.

  
"We're real thieves now," Akira grinned.

  
"More like little mousies, sneakin' into the kitchen," Ryuji snorted.

  
Akira dug through their haul until he came up with some kind of orange crunchy snack. "Here mousie. Got some cheese for you," he said, and threw it against Ryuji's chest.

  
She sat on the table, stirring the pile of junk with one hand without really seeing it. "That shouldn't have worked," she announced.

  
Yusuke's eyes went wide. "Don't make it disappear!" He hurriedly opened the package nearest him. Something sweet, by the look of it.

  
"No, the _food's_ fine. I meant the Shadows."

  
They each munched their snacks quietly, waiting for her to spit it out.

  
"That was too easy, that's all. Shouldn't they have heard us? Usually their hearing's pretty good. Joker, you were _so_ loud - "

  
He made an offended sound, but the effect was spoiled by the blissful look on his face as he mowed through a short cylindrical container of chips.

  
Yusuke took her seriously, at least. He held one bite sized, chocolate filled cookie halfway to his mouth as he thought things over. "Perhaps it's just that we've gotten stronger." He ate the tiny cookie carefully, savouring it. "The Shadows become less wary of our presence the stronger we become. We've seen it before, haven't we?"

  
True. The Shadows that hung out toward the entrance of the museum were so much weaker than they were now that they could just about stroll right by them. Maybe that was really all it was. She finally selected a packet of green gummies and stuck one in her mouth. Muscat flavour. "Yeah. Guess so. We did a _lot_ of fighting today." She offered a gummy to Yusuke. "You like these?"

  
He didn't answer until he'd eaten it. "Yes!"

  
She laughed and scooched closer on the table without looking too closely at where she was going, and -

  
All she heard was a loud pop behind her and the sound of Ryuji and Akira laughing like a couple of hyenas at her. She whipped her head to the side to glare at Akira, keeping his hand over his mouth as he laughed because his mouth was still full. "What?!" she snapped.

  
He almost couldn't speak. "Y-your ass keeps getting you into trouble today, huh?"

  
Ryuji howled with laughter and spilled one or two of his chips. "You said it, man, not me - "

  
_"What?!"_

  
Yusuke pulled his chair in closer to the table and peered around behind her, suddenly _way_ too close, and started using both hands to shuffle something just an inch or two away from her ass -

  
She jumped off of the table and spun around to see what the hell was so funny. All she could see was Yusuke scooping up a double handful of pretzels. "You popped it," he explained. "It would be a shame to waste them."

  
"Look out, he's goin' for your ass snacks - " Ryuji snickered, and Akira just lost it. He flung himself all the way back in his office chair and pulled his knees up to his chest, laughing hard enough now that she could see tears streaming down his face.

  
Yusuke sniffed. "I wasn't going to keep them all to myself." He reached across the table, over their dozens of packages of snacks, and carefully laid out the pretzels in a pile, as if every single one was precious.

  
Ryuji and Akira's laughter was infectious. She started to laugh too, even if it was at herself, and ate a pretzel.

  
\----------

  
In time, she stretched out on the floor in the dim blue gloom of the safe room, roughly where they had set the fire on their first night inside. Akira and Yusuke were sitting on the couch, talking in low voices about something that sounded serious - she kept hearing 'Madarame', at least - so she decided to give up her shot at the couch and tried to make herself comfortable on the thinly carpeted floor.

  
She heard Ryuji settle down on the floor behind her, a few feet away. "Ain't it weird how you don't get hungry in here?" he asked, and she relaxed. If he just wanted to talk, they could talk.

  
"Yeah, seriously. I'm not even thirsty."

  
"Right? I only had a Coke 'n we been in here, like. At _least_ a day. I should be thirsty."

  
She knew him. His voice came out light and easy, but he was making conversation so he wouldn't have to think of his mom worrying about him.

  
He annoyed the shit out of her, but she could be nice. Sometimes. "Yeah, that's gotta mean time's super slow in here," she said, telling him what he wanted to hear. It felt true, anyway. "If all we've had is a bite of katsu bun and a little baggie of snacks and we're still not even hungry, I bet it's only been a few hours, outside."

  
"Yeah." She heard him shift behind her. He was probably laying down now, like she was. "'s weird though. I feel like sleepin' again, too. We didn't even do all that much today."

  
Privately, she thought her sore feet and muscles made it feel like she'd done plenty, but she knew he'd use that as ammunition of some kind and kept her mouth shut. "Yeah. Guess I'm tired too." She rolled away from him and tried to pillow the side of her face with her hand. At least her suit and the material of her gloves kept her skin off of the scratchy carpet this way.

  
In the sudden silence, she heard Yusuke speak, something barely above a whisper that she couldn't make out but which gave her the impression that he must have been upset. But Akira was talking to him. He could handle it, whatever it was.

  
She also heard Ryuji inching closer behind her.

  
"What are you doing?" she asked sharply, keeping her voice quiet.

  
"Dunno. Nothin'."

  
"Uh huh."

  
"Whaddyou think I'm doin'?"

  
"Trying for a - a repeat. A repeat of... before."

  
He left that alone for a long moment, apparently hoping she'd tell him without him having to ask, but she let the seconds spin out.

  
Now she heard Akira's voice on the couch, ten feet away or so and above their heads, though she couldn't make out what he said, either.

  
"Would that be so bad? A... repeat?" Very slowly, and very carefully, Ryuji settled his hand on her hip.

  
It wasn't the worst idea in the world. She could see herself giving him another chance. The memory of hearing him groaning her name in her ear held a certain appeal.

  
But now that she was back to thinking rationally, she realized that if she wanted anything for herself out of this deal, she'd have to wriggle around on the floor to unzip her ridiculous suit. Not the most unobtrusive maneuver with Akira and Yusuke sitting ten feet away. Without her own body urging her on, encouraging her to make stupid decisions, the idea of Akira - and _Yusuke,_ this time - watching them was unpleasant again.

  
There was another issue with her suit. Or her inside it, more accurately. They'd all been running and fighting and sweating all day long, and she hadn't been able to do more than wash her hands and face since yesterday morning. What they were calling yesterday.

  
She and Ryuji were getting into weird new territory, and now she wasn't quite certain what this called for. Usually something like this would get him a smack and an insult. The silent treatment, too, for most of a day. But now she had to rethink her approach.

  
He'd asked nicely enough. Sort of. Right now it was just his hand on her hip, nothing else.

  
It wouldn't kill her to be nice, if he was going to try, too. "Not, uh. Not tonight."

  
He left his hand there.

  
She twitched her hip, hinting, but he didn't get it. "Come on," she warned.

  
If there'd been the slightest suggestion of a leer in his voice, she'd have shoved him away right there. But there wasn't. He just sounded hopeful. "How about somethin' else?"

  
What else could there possibly - _"What?"_ Her patience with him was going down the drain.

  
"Just... this. Nothin' else." He inched closer, then closer still, and slung his arm around her middle. His hand rested on the floor in front of her in a loose fist, and she waited for what seemed like a minute or more for him to make a move again. But he didn't.

  
It did feel kind of nice. Hearing someone breathe behind you and pull you close. And it was cold in here without a fire.

  
But there'd been too many snitty asides from him today. Too many jabs about her weight. It didn't make her feel overly charitable, and just because he was being good now didn't mean he wouldn't try for something later. "Flip over," she demanded.

  
"I wasn't gonna - "

  
"Flip _over."_

  
He did, grousing the whole while, but he stopped when she put her arm in front of him, just as he'd done to her, and pulled him tight until they were much closer than they'd been a moment ago.

  
"Oh," he said, sounding dumb, and a second later, they both heard the distinct sound of someone kissing someone else on the couch across the room. They giggled quietly in the near dark, and she pulled up her thighs until she'd tucked them under his, like a fullbody hug. She fell asleep with her face pressed against the back of his oversized collar and her hand grasping one of his crisscrossed ammo belts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know? Bonobos use casual sexual contact as a form of conflict resolution


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 3**

 

When Ann had fallen asleep, she'd had her arm slung around Ryuji's waist and her legs drawn up tight behind his. When she woke up, it took her a moment to figure out what had changed.

 

She'd fallen asleep on her side, but now she was on her back, more or less. Part of her back was touching the carpet, at least. Her hips were twisted at an angle though, and, horrified, she realized she'd clamped both of her legs right around one of Ryuji's thighs, as tight as she could. 

 

But she didn't have much time to be embarrassed. She felt movement just as her eyes popped open, and in the dim light she confirmed what she'd suspected: Ryuji was both deeply asleep and just as hard as she'd seen him -  _ felt  _ him - yesterday, over by the vending machine. He'd rolled towards her in his sleep, too, and even as she stared at him, his hips kept moving. Just the slightest rhythmic rocking. That shape she could see beneath his Metaverse suit was only a few inches away from touching her thigh.

 

"God, get  _ off - "  _ she screeched, and shoved his shoulder, a move she regretted instantly once she realized that he'd rolled onto her hair in his sleep. Instead of putting some distance between the two of them, she just managed to wake up Akira and Yusuke in the process of nearly scalping herself.

 

But catching sight of their sleepy, guilty faces on the other side of the room made her annoyance at Ryuji flip right over to vindication. For a second or two she'd pictured Akira having something to torment her with for the rest of the day, once he'd noticed how she and Ryuji had fallen asleep, but she'd worried for nothing, because Akira and Yusuke had had the same idea. Akira was closest to her, still lying on his side, and as she watched, Yusuke raised his head behind him, pulling Akira tighter against him for a moment as he peered over at her and Ryuji. His eyes were barely open.

 

She tried to raise her head enough to grin at the two of them, but her hair stopped her short again, and she was right back to where she'd started. Fuming.

 

How could he  _ still  _ be asleep? He had to just be pretending. She settled for sticking her gloved fingers into his hair, both hands, and yanked it upwards to lift his head so she could free herself. She wasn't all that gentle when she dropped his head back down to the floor, either. 

 

Whatever. There was carpet. He'd be fine.

 

_ Now _ he was awake for sure. He groaned, clutching the back of his head. "The fuck’re you... "

 

She finally got out of reach and scrabbled backwards, pulling her knees up and glaring at him. 

 

...actually, now that she'd had a minute to wake up and assess the situation, it didn't seem like he'd been trying to make a move on her after all. Not really. She'd just reacted before her brain had had a chance to catch up. But, still. He'd been a royal pain in the ass yesterday, so she didn't feel too torn up inside about giving him a taste of payback.

 

She locked eyes with Akira, still lying on his side five feet away or so, and watched for his reaction as she answered Ryuji. "Last night you said you wanted a - a snuggle buddy, or something. Touching me with your nasty dick wasn't part of the deal."

 

She savoured their three very different reactions. Yusuke wore a complicated disgust-amazement-horror expression. Akira's was more like simple delight. Ryuji, though, looked utterly, completely ashamed - his face dark red, his eyes squeezed shut - and as he lurched to his feet and fled the safe room, it occurred to her that she might have gone too far.

 

"You don't even have your - ! " Akira stammered, way too late. "He doesn't even have his mask," he said, to no one in particular. He and Yusuke finally seemed to realize how close they still were and scrambled to their feet, putting some distance between the two of them.

 

Yusuke had regained his composure. "We should follow him. If a Shadow catches him unawares, he will be at a disadvantage without his Persona."

 

It made sense, so they didn’t waste time debating it. They put their masks on, and Yusuke left the safe room first, giving Akira just enough time to sidle up to her and give her that smirk of his. Apparently he wasn’t so worried about Ryuji that he couldn’t take the time to try to get under her skin. "Snuggle buddy, huh.”

 

"Yeah, yeah. Whaddyou call it, then?" It wasn't like she hadn't just caught him doing the exact same thing.

 

"Oh, are you asking about my bedmate? My cuddle pal? My friend between the sheets?"

 

"Those are  _ worse!" _

 

He laughed and slung his arm around her waist for a second until their hips knocked together, then caught up to Yusuke outside the safe room, and she realized belatedly that, last night at least, the couch had gone unclaimed. What a waste! She could've slept on it for the entire night.

 

Further down the corridor, the three of them hid behind a corner in single file, waiting for Akira to give the signal to move forward, and she couldn't help but grumble a little. "We better not have to go hunting for  _ two _ people now."

 

Directly in front of her, Akira stood and slowly waved at someone or something in the exhibit room they were crouched outside. He sounded amused. "Nope. One down, one to go."

 

Ryuji's face was determined to turn a deep red and stay that way. He managed to avoid looking all three of them in the eye for the entire return trip.

 

Back in the safe room, he slammed himself into one of the office chairs pulled up to the table, crossed his arms, and burrowed his face into them, groaning just like when Akira had caught the two of them beside the vending machine yesterday - or whatever they were all calling the period of time before they’d slept again.

 

He was taking it a lot harder than she'd expected. Usually he blew up at embarrassing shit, sure, but then he'd also laugh it off and move things along to the next topic at the first opportunity. "Come on," she finally said, sitting on the table next to his elbow. "It's not a big deal."

 

He grunted and said nothing, his face still hidden.

 

She looked up at Akira and Yusuke, shrugging. They had dicks. Maybe there was something you said in this situation, one guy to another. But nobody volunteered.

 

She reached behind herself and grabbed her silly Panther tail, using it to thwap Ryuji on the back of the head and shoulders until he twitched. "Ugh," she said begrudgingly. "You didn't even touch me." If anything, she'd been touching him more, with the way she'd gone to sleep with her thighs closed tight around his leg. "I just - I just thought you were going to, that's all. It's fine."

 

Akira must have been waiting for her to get that non-apology out of the way. He slid into the office chair next to Ryuji and poked him in the side. "Nothing I haven't seen before, right?"

 

_ That  _ got a reaction out of him. Ryuji whipped his head to the side and glared at Akira, though he sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "Uh, shut up?"

 

"You don't remember? When we were - "

 

"I didn't say I  _ didn't remember - " _

 

Heh. Some of her suspicions had just been confirmed. She gave Yusuke, seated across from her at the table, an evil grin, but when he didn't return it with anything other than a neutral look she couldn't decipher, she remembered that he might not feel the way she did about it.

 

Maybe they were going to have a problem, actually. 

 

Akira had done... something, yesterday, with Yusuke in the men's washroom. She wasn't sure what. She supposed they could've just been talking. But it had definitely sounded like they'd done more than just talking on the couch last night, before she'd fallen asleep. 

 

She hadn't quite added it all up until now. Akira had done that with Yusuke, but he'd also apparently done... something, with Ryuji in the past - the same something, or a different something? - and he'd kissed  _ her, _ yesterday -

 

She looked from Yusuke's face to Akira's, trying to figure out how all of this was going to play out.

 

Ryuji had finally shoved himself upright in his seat, smiling weakly. "Uh. What's the plan, then? Today?"

 

A good attempt, but Yusuke wasn't ready to let go of the topic that quickly. He was staring at each of them in turn. "Have you  _ all  _ had dalliances with each other?"

 

Dalliances. Gross. Yusuke talked like he was a hundred years old sometimes. She snorted and waited to see if Akira would take it upon himself to answer, but he just kept quiet and got up from the table. He wandered over to the couch and seated himself in the exact centre of it, then opened his legs and patted the space between them. "C'mere," he said, looking at her.

 

The question wasn't just going to go away. It was easy to see why Yusuke was eager to know just how friendly Akira had been with each of them. She was pretty curious too, actually. But, for the moment, she was more curious about what he was scheming right now, so she did as he asked, perching precariously on the very edge of the couch between his legs.

 

"No, on the floor, dummy. Your ass is too big. You're gonna fall off."

 

_ "Rude." _ She chose to ignore Ryuji's laughter and swatted at Akira's legs, then eased herself down to the carpet in front of him, grabbing his calves in each hand and hugging them to her sides. 

 

Then she couldn't help but let out a small, startled noise. "Ah - "

 

Akira had taken her hair out of its ties, and now he was running his slippery gloved hands through it. She immediately let her head loll back against his hands, and a shiver went up her spine as he began to gently pull her hair.

 

"Did you hear what I said?" Yusuke asked sharply, apparently to the room at large.

 

Ryuji shrugged at him and got up from the table himself. "This sounds like a leader kinda question." She felt him drop himself onto the couch next to Akira, and even though he sounded a lot better, she still felt bad about how she'd freaked out at him in front of everyone. Kind of bad. A little bad. So she told herself that that was why she let go of Akira's leg, reached out, and grabbed Ryuji's leg instead. She gave the muscle of his calf a friendly squeeze and let go just as quickly, returning her hand to Akira's leg, though not before Akira had made a discontented sort of noise at the loss, she noticed.

 

Akira kept his voice low. "Skull and I may have worked together to get through some study sheets, a couple times."

 

Too low. Yusuke leaned forward in his seat at the table in the middle of the room, trying to make out his words. "Pardon?"

 

She lowered her voice to match Akira's. "Oh, homework, huh. 'Study sheets.'"

 

"Yup," Ryuji said, above her head and to her left, with a grin in his voice. He didn't seem to have any problem talking about it if it could be like this, with a thin layer of pretense standing in the way.

 

She tried to keep her voice steady. "I bet it went quicker after you - after you started working on it together. Two heads are better than one, right?"

 

Akira squeezed her sides with his legs in surprise but managed to keep it together, just barely. His voice was shaking worse than hers had been. "Y-yeah, definitely - "

 

Yusuke usually kept himself on a tight leash, but by now he'd had enough. He pushed his chair back from the table abruptly and stomped over to the couch, squeezing in next to Akira on his right. "You seem to believe I have superhuman hearing," he said pointedly, and she finally realized that this had been Akira's game all along. Now he had them all in one place, packed in tight and within reach.

 

Before she could think better of it - before Rational Ann could stop Horny Ann - she let go of Akira's leg and snaked her arm out, giving Yusuke's calf a squeeze just as she'd done to Ryuji’s a moment ago. Akira whined again, of course, counting any attention paid to someone other than him as an insult, but just below his voice, she could hear Yusuke's. A tiny 'mm!' of surprise. But he didn't say anything more, and he didn’t twitch his leg away, either, so she left her hand where it was.

 

In fact, Yusuke moved his leg a little closer, close enough to touch his knee to Akira's.

 

"Sorry," Akira said to Yusuke. "You must not've heard me." As though he hadn't just been practically whispering on purpose. "Yeah, me and Skull have had, um. Dalliances."

 

Ryuji groaned next to her, though she couldn't tell if it was out of embarrassment or if it was because he disliked that word as much as she did.

 

She opened her mouth to laugh, or to try to convince Yusuke to pick a word from the modern age, maybe, but Akira was moving his hands again. He massaged the back of her neck and plunged his hands into her hair in one motion, kneading and pulling, and she couldn't stay quiet. She gasped, too loud, and arched her back against the couch before she could convince her hips to stop moving.

 

Her face burned. God. She had to control herself -

 

Ryuji laughed - of course he did, she would have too - but the sound of it cut off abruptly as Akira jerked his knee out to the side, hitting Ryuji's as if to tell him to bite his tongue.

 

Yusuke either didn't recognize what had just happened or didn't think it was worth commenting on. "Then... I suppose yesterday was only... "

 

Her heart sank. She knew they were going to have a problem. Poor Yusuke. She tried to show him her sympathy with her hand, running it down to the ankle of his knee high boot and back up. Then she hugged his leg to her side, hard, before circling his calf with her fingers again.

 

Akira sounded like he was taking it seriously, at least. "I guess I was just... trying to make you feel better."

 

Ryuji wasn't completely useless. "We ain't serious, man. Joker 'n me. I'll back off if you guys're, like. Into each other."

 

Good boy. She took her other hand off of Akira’s slim calf and put it on Ryuji's thicker one, trying to give him encouragement.

 

Akira was such a  _ distraction, _ though. He didn't like the loss of her hands, so he retaliated, massaging her shoulders and gently but firmly pulling her hair until she flung her head back. She pressed her lips together and managed to keep silent this time but couldn't control her expression, and judging by the way Yusuke's leg thumped against Akira’s, he'd figured out what was going on.

 

"Would you  _ stop - " _ she begged, but that was a mistake. Her voice came out in what even she had to admit was a moan, and she clutched Yusuke's and Ryuji's legs in a conflicting mix of aggravation at Akira, sympathy for Yusuke and a mounting frustration aimed at all three of them. All four of them, really, because she felt more than a little frustrated with herself.

 

Yusuke didn't sound upset, but she found him hard to gauge still. Maybe he was, and he was just hiding it. "And am I to assume that the two of you have been involved in the past as well? Joker? Panther?"

 

_ "No," _ she snapped.

 

Akira cupped the back of her neck with his gloved hand just as he gathered up all of her loose hair into a makeshift ponytail with the other hand and  _ pulled - _

 

They all saw her legs move. She  _ knew _ they did. Her thighs rubbed together, squeezing herself tight as she writhed, her body reacting without her permission. The tiny, breathy noise she made just hammered home what was going on.

 

Akira shifted on the couch behind her. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice low in her ear. "That massage probably counts, don't you think?"

 

"We didn't even - ahh - " she gasped, just as Akira lightly trailed a fingertip up the side of her neck and under her jaw, where her latex suit ended.

 

All she could hear now was the sound of Ryuji and Akira laughing above her head like the idiots they were. "It was just a  _ massage!" _ she growled. "I wasn't even - I didn't even  _ like _ it like that - " Probably not the most convincing argument, given the state she was in right now.

 

"Yes you did, yes you did - " Akira chanted gleefully.

 

_ "I had all my clothes on - " _

 

"So? I could still tell - "

 

"How," she demanded hotly. He was such an _ asshole - _

 

Akira pitched his voice higher and moaned like a porn star, a lot louder than she'd ever been in her entire goddamn life. "Unh, please," he imitated. "A - a little  _ lower - " _

 

She shrieked with rage and extracted her right arm from Yusuke's and Akira’s legs, made a fist, and brought it down with a satisfying thump on the pointed toe of Akira's boot. "I don't sound like that!"

 

“Aw, he’s just the worst, huh?” Ryuji said in an entirely unconvincing imitation of someone sympathetic to her situation.

 

She couldn’t trust her voice as far as she could throw it so she growled her assent, keeping her mouth shut.

 

“Yeah, ‘n he’s even been lookin’ down your cleavage all this time - “

 

She pulled her knees to her chest and felt the couch shake behind her as Akira did something to Ryuji. Possibly he was strangling him. Good. “As if you didn’t have your hands on her tits  _ yesterday,  _ you snitch _ \-  _ ” Akira protested.

 

Enough was enough. It was time to take back some dignity. She lunged out of Akira’s grasp and spun around on the carpeted floor to face them, sitting crosslegged and leaning back on her hands to change the angle and take away their view. As much as she could in her ridiculous suit, anyway. “How about we all stop talking about my tits, hmm?” she said icily.

 

Ryuji dared to roll his eyes at her, and that was it. Target acquired. She’d apologized a few minutes ago for embarrassing him in front of Akira and Yusuke, sort of, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t change her mind just as easily. “See if I let you get all cozied up to me again, then, “ she sniffed. “You and your nasty dick - “

 

_ “It wasn’t even out - “ _

 

He could say whatever he wanted, but he couldn’t do a thing about the colour his face was turning. She revelled in it. “Is that all it takes, for you? You just need a warm body next to you and then you’re fucking - fucking  _ humping  _ their leg like a - “

 

While she spelled out for him just how far she was willing to go, it occurred to her that she probably didn’t have much room to talk, seeing as how she was soaking wet and frustrated all over again just from a neck rub and some verbal teasing. 

 

She wrinkled her nose at the thought. Her catsuit was starting to feel a little… lived in. A little itchy in places she didn’t want to be caught scratching. But Ryuji was interrupting her.

 

“I’m  _ sorry,  _ okay?! We been in here on this weird fuckin’...  _ camping _ trip for like three days - a while,  _ whatever,  _ and it ain’t like I got any privacy!” Ryuji stammered. “It ain’t like I had any time to myself to… “ He trailed off, grimacing and looking away at the corner of the room. His face matched his ascot now.

 

She glanced over to Akira in the middle of the couch and Yusuke at the opposite end in time to catch them sharing a very interesting look. A little smirky on Akira’s end, a little embarrassed on Yusuke’s, and a little guilty on both their parts.

 

Akira and Yusuke had had certain opportunities that she and Ryuji hadn’t. In fact, she and Ryuji were in the exact same boat, really, and the realization made her switch sides all over again. A free agent to the very end. She inched across the floor over to Ryuji’s end of the couch and manhandled his legs until she could sit between them with her back to the couch, just like she’d done with Akira’s a moment ago. The most sincere apology she could manage.

 

His body stayed stiff, suspecting an attack, but he finally relaxed against her when she curled her fingers around his calves through his Metaverse suit.

 

Akira played peacemaker, too. “I suppose that would... contribute,” he allowed, and then he immediately ruined it. “I can sympathize,” he said, with just the slightest touch of smugness. Just enough to let her and Ryuji know that actually, no, he  _ couldn’t _ sympathize, not one bit, because yesterday he’d gotten his, and so had Yusuke.

 

There was a pause, and in the silence she heard the couch shift. She could  _ feel  _ them staring at the back of her head, waiting for her to speak up. 

 

Apparently this was just how things were now. They all just let each other in on the most private things, like who had gotten off, and when, and who hadn’t. Orgasm Report with the Phantom Thieves News Team. Live updates as soon as they’re available.

 

“Ugh. Some people have  _ self control  _ around others,” she said haughtily, and then, for Ryuji’s ears only, she mumbled into his knee, ”and also I don’t have any of my toys.” He laughed loud and squeezed her between his legs, and when Akira demanded to know what he was laughing at, he refused to answer.

 

Suddenly Yusuke got to his feet and left the couch without a word, and Akira and Ryuji stopped squabbling immediately. She felt another wave of sympathy for Yusuke and decided that it might be a good idea to talk to him one on one later. He’d been through a lot already without having the strange situation they were in piled on top of it. 

 

But when he spoke, his back turned, his tone was only neutral. Measured, though, and she briefly wondered how much of how he was feeling was on display at any given time, and how much was hidden. “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but our food stores have been depleted.”

 

He was right. Every single one of the dozens of bags of vendo snacks that they had carefully smuggled back to the safe room yesterday had vanished - a solid reminder that they were at the whims of the Metaverse, and a bit of a mood killer. Without needing to put it into words, they quit teasing each other, and Akira gave her back her hair ties. They stood to leave. It was time to get to work.

 

\-------------

 

They made what had become their rounds. A quick peek out the skylight that was their primary entrance to the museum showed that the weather was still lethal, and when Ryuji insisted that they confirm it at the actual main entrance, she didn’t argue this time. 

 

She felt the same way he did. This was getting to be a long field trip.

 

The world outside was still black and white, staccato. Off and then on again, flash flash flash. As they watched through the glass doors, a car lit up like a lightbulb, retina searingly bright but completely silent, as lightning spidered down to it. Smoke poured from its interior and from beneath its hood, and when the next flash lit up the parking lot, she could see that most of the windshield had turned an ugly, sooty brown. 

 

The thunder rolled a split second later, earsplittingly loud as usual, as if the storm had to put its foot down. Well. That was that, then.

 

They hit the washrooms next, Ryuji complaining for the entire trip, and for the second time it occurred to her that this was all wrong. Just like yesterday, when Akira had rustled the whole way from the vending machine to the safe room, all the noise Ryuji was making should have led every guard in earshot straight to them. But the guards let them be. Maybe they were having a staff meeting somewhere.

 

The guys did their thing next door, chatting and laughing, while she fumbled with her zippers in front of the washroom mirror. She’d finally caught hold of the zipper attached to her tail and was closing the stall door behind her when she realized that she didn’t even have to go. Not really.

 

Maybe that was a little reassuring, she thought as she sat down and made an effort anyway, since she was here and all. She definitely couldn’t go a full day without a bathroom break out in the real world, but in the Palace, she was fine.

 

Did that just mean that the usual rules didn’t apply in here, or was it an indicator of how little  time had actually passed? She took a moment and wished hard for the latter. Sure, she didn’t have anyone she cared about waiting for her at home, but the thought of the school taking notice of her absence for not only one day but days, multiple, was not her idea of a good time. The fact that the clock was ticking for all of them as far as Madarame was concerned was weighing on her mind, too.

 

They could keep infiltrating and make some progress while they were stuck in here anyway, after all, but if Madarame’s Palace was anything like Kamoshida’s had been, they’d need to step out of the Metaverse in order to leave a calling card before they could steal the Treasure. She decided to talk it over with the others and set the matter aside for later.

 

She finished up and washed her hands, splashing her face as best she could and giving up on her hair as a lost cause before she’d really begun to fix it. 

 

She grimaced at her reflection.

 

Ryuji and Akira sounded like they were having the time of their lives in the men’s washroom. She could hear Yusuke from time to time, too, his voice a low mumble below the other two. Meanwhile, here she was trapped in her awful second skin, uncomfortable and growing  _ more _ uncomfortable by the hour. After all that running and sneaking and sweating for the last two days, not to mention every time she’d either been teased or been doing the teasing, she felt disgusting.

 

She did what she could, but she could only get so far. A swipe with a wet paper towel up top, where her cleavage was on display, and a lot lower down, as much as she could reach without having to unzip any farther, was the best she could do. It would be just like Ryuji or maybe Akira to stick their heads around the corner and catch her at it, too, so she made her paper towel bath quick and then slowly, carefully eased the zipper attached to her tail back to its resting spot above her ass.

 

The idea of catching herself in her zipper was still a real fear at the front of her mind. And - her eyes widened - were these zippers even -

 

She pressed her chin to her collarbones and peered at her nearest zippers, the ones framing her cleavage, and growled in frustration. Just as she’d thought. Her cognition had given her ridiculous fantasy fetish zippers, not anything functional. They didn’t have any - any bottom thingies. The metal bits at the bottom that stopped the zipper from going right off the track. 

 

She’d be able to get out of her catsuit, sure. But without those metal things to line up, there was no way in hell she’d ever get it back on again. She’d be as clean as a public washroom sink could get her but naked for however long they were in here, and the idea of being stuck like that - against her will, at least - around two guys she’d been in an escalating arms race with and a third one she barely knew was extremely unappealing.

 

If they spent a considerable chunk of their time staring at her the way she was dressed  _ now,  _ then...

 

_ They  _ could just unzip and go. Unzip and wash themselves at the sinks a lot better than she could, too, she was willing to bet. She wasn’t a complainer, but the unfairness of it all was starting to get to her.

 

Ugh. And her hair was not only messy, but starting to get greasy, too. She pictured herself showing up for a shoot in this kind of condition, snorted at the image, and then gave herself a mental slap. 

 

No time for self pity. It was time to get going.

 

Just like yesterday, the three of them were lined up in a row outside the washrooms, waiting for her to come out. But this time, when Ryuji opened his big fat mouth to make some crack about her bathroom routine, Akira yanked him forward by the elbow and gave him a quick, closemouthed kiss just in time. It shut him up perfectly, and they all trooped out in the direction of the vending machine without a word. She laughed, and Akira laughed, and while Ryuji sputtered, she fell back and executed her reconnaissance maneuver with Yusuke, falling in step with him behind the others.

 

She knew for a fact that he’d just gotten a good eyeful of Akira kissing Ryuji, but he looked... fine. He was even smiling faintly, as if in answer to the laugh she was still dragging out as cover.

 

It was unnecessary, so she let it die out as she leaned close to him and said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Ugh. I feel so grubby. Don’t you?”

 

He looked immaculate, of course. It wasn’t fair. But he raised his gloved hand to the side of his head, as if to touch his hair, then lowered it again immediately when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to feel it. “Yes. I confess I could use a trip to a bathhouse, should one appear in what we’re calling an art museum.” He gave her a hint of a wry little smile, as if to point out all the other ridiculous things they’d either seen or had a direct hand in creating within the museum, and as she looked closer, she noticed that there was some extra colour to his face, too. The parts of it that she could see below and behind his fox mask, at least.

 

“How come you’re blushing, huh?” she teased. Of course she knew the answer. Yusuke was so uptight that he’d had a hard time admitting to needing the bathroom in front of her and the others yesterday, so admitting he needed a bath had to have been difficult for him, too. But he seemed more comfortable overall, and he could look her in the eye as they talked about it, so she decided to consider it progress.

 

Progress or no, he refused to answer her question. The silence was beginning to get uncomfortable, so she got to the point. “Does it bug you?” She gestured with her chin to Akira and Ryuji up ahead, neither of them even bothering to be sneaky, since the museum staff were still mysteriously absent from every exhibit room they’d passed through. “Them, I mean.”

 

He looked away, but reached for his own mouth absentmindedly, stopping again before his gloved fingers made contact. “No.”

 

She called forth her whip out of thin air to give her hands something to do and played with it, coiling it around one elbow only to let it unfurl and trail behind her like a second tail as they walked across the waxed floor. “I guess you don’t have to say if you don’t want. None of my business.”

 

His smile was back, the subtle, barely there one again, and now he looked away from her in a different way that she couldn’t put her finger on until he answered. “I wouldn’t say that.”

 

Was he... playing coy? He couldn’t be feeling too upset about what had just happened if he was acting like that, then. “What, you mean it  _ is  _ my business? If you and Joker - “

 

“It would seem to be your business. In the same way that what you and Joker do together would seem to be my business.”

 

She wasn’t sure how to interpret that - did he mean that in a snarky way? Did Yusuke feel like Akira had been shoving how he’d been teasing her in his face? - until she saw that he was giving her a much more unmistakable smile. An easy, genuine smile, as though the idea didn’t bother him a bit.

 

He was trying to tease  _ her. _

 

She could handle Akira. Sort of. And she was used to what Ryuji could throw at her. But Yusuke dishing it out completely disarmed her. Her face flooded with warmth, her mouth opened and closed, and before her brain could stop her, she sped up and jogged away, bringing her even with Akira and Ryuji and leaving Yusuke in the dust.

 

\----------

 

They’d only made it halfway to the vending machine, more or less, when Akira asked them to stop.

 

The museum was huge, and she figured that even the visitors who weren’t stuck wearing uncomfortable heels like her would want a rest now and then, which probably explained the groups of colourful couches every few rooms. The four of them sank down to a little arrangement of them in the centre of an exhibit room while Akira took stock the way he always did during their infiltrations. Though, she had to admit, his questions would have suited a real field trip just as well.

 

“Okay, so. You guys hungry?”

 

They shook their heads. Even Yusuke, she noticed.

 

“Thirsty?”

 

Ryuji waggled his hand in a ‘sort of’ gesture, and Ann shrugged and nodded, but not enthusiastically. She could wait.

 

“Then maybe we better push on and look for Mona before we do provisions again. I’m worried about him.”

 

She shared a guilty look with Yusuke, sitting next to her on the couch. Morgana hadn’t really been at the top of her list of priorities for quite some time, and the fact that certain things had done their best to distract her was an inadequate excuse. “I hope he’s okay.”

 

Even Ryuji nodded, though he changed the subject just as quickly. “I been thinkin’ about our progress, though. If we’re trapped in here ‘til the deadline, then… “

 

“Yeah,” Akira agreed quietly. “We can’t let that happen.”

 

“I have another concern as well,” Yusuke said. Then he fell silent.

 

They turned to him, worried, though she started to grin as soon as she realized where he was going with it. It couldn’t have come from anyone else but him, but because it did come from him, now, in Madarame’s Palace, there was no way Akira and Ryuji would say no.

 

Yusuke’s face began to turn pink again, but his mouth remained closed, so she jumped in and saved him. “I think he means he needs a bath.” That sounded mean. “We all do, I mean,” she added hurriedly.

 

He lowered his head in a solemn nod.

 

“I mean, probably,” Akira said. “But, like - you’re not worried, Fox? We have no idea what the date is. Mona always seems to be able to tell how far we have left to go, somehow, but without him - “

 

Ryuji was all for it, and she felt her shoulders relax. “Nah, I think we better. I stink, man,” he said to Akira. “You gotta take care of your body or you won’t get nowhere, push comes to shove.”

 

She’d been certain that Akira would buy whatever pseudo health advice his buddy the jock doled out, but instead he surprised her and scoffed at Ryuji. “I  _ told  _ you. You should’ve been taking whore’s baths like me.”

 

“W-what?!” she sputtered. 

 

That smirk of his was back. Ryuji cut in, lightning fast, before Akira could say a word, though. “He’d know, huh?”

 

This was his olive branch to make up for before, or maybe to show her that he’d accepted one of her own non-apologies. Either way, she accepted it gladly and piled on. “Yeah, Joker, are all of your baths called that by default, or - “

 

He sighed, shaking his head in mock disdain at the mere prospect of having to explain such things to cretins, and slouched down on the couch. He opened his mouth to begin educating them, but as he did, he raised his arms to prop his hands behind his head, and -

 

She covered her face with both hands and giggled into them. “Whoof... “

 

“What?” Akira demanded.

 

Yusuke was beside her and looked confused, but Ryuji was on Akira’s other side and was already nodding in agreement. “Yeah, uh, sorry man.”

 

“What?!”

 

“I don’t think whore’s baths work. Not when you’re in a big leather coat, anyway.”

 

Akira lowered his arms in a hurry and suddenly looked very flustered for someone wearing Joker’s mask. “Okay,  _ fine, _ but I don’t think we’re going to be able to find a - a bathhouse in here, or whatever.”

 

Fair point. “That’s sort of the problem,” she agreed.

 

Yusuke got to his feet abruptly, as she was almost coming to expect from him, and stood in front of the couches they were sitting on so he could address all three of them at once. “It’s simple!” he announced, smug. “We are already there.”

 

“Uh, what?” Ryuji asked.

 

Yusuke lifted his arm dramatically and pointed to a pair of modest double doors at the far end of the exhibit room. “I’m surprised you don’t remember the grand entrance Panther and I made. Though I suppose it left a stronger impression on me, given that it was my first taste of the Metaverse.”

 

Grand entrance… ? She put the pieces together, though it didn’t make much more sense once she had. “What, when we  _ fell?  _ And you caught me? I mean, thanks, I guess, but - “

 

Akira was a step ahead. “Oh my god, he means the courtyard,” he muttered.

 

It clicked for her, too. She groaned. “You want to have a bath in the fountain?! The - the water feature?!” Then she remembered that she didn’t even have a horse in this race, since if she took off her catsuit, she’d never be able to put it back on again, so she settled back against the couch and crossed her legs and arms, fed up all over again.

 

She didn’t particularly want to splash around out in the open - technically outside, even - but she also didn’t particularly have a  _ choice, _ did she? The thought of it made her grouchy, and that made her lash out. “You guys’ll get fried, you know. If the storm’s still going,” she said pointedly, bouncing her foot.

 

They hadn’t thought of that. 

 

“I’ll go look,” Ryuji volunteered after a moment, because she knew he’d rather be moving than moping, and hopped up off of the couch. 

 

She got to her feet and trudged after him, her heels making a satisfying racket. If she was right, and he got electrocuted in the time it took for him to poke his nose outside, she could at least have Carmen at the ready to patch him back together.

 

Were his gloves rubber? Probably not. Maybe the soles of his boots? She worried for him as he eased the door open, holding her breath as she catalogued all the metal on his outfit, but -

 

“Clear!” he sang out a second later, and flung both doors wide open. She let out all of her breath and followed him out.

 

Well, at least it was pretty?

 

She hadn’t exactly been in the mood to admire her surroundings on the day she’d had to yank Yusuke out of Madarame’s shack and into the museum to get away from the security company closing in. Falling a storey or more into the arms of a stranger had a focusing effect, too, she’d found. But now that she had a chance to look around, she had to admit that the way the ripples of the large, rectangular pool of water sparkled in the dim golden light was eyecatching.

 

The sky above the courtyard was just its usual moody, dark blue self. No electrical storm. No thunder. Just the night sky and the low banks of inky clouds that the museum always had hanging over it.

 

That meant - 

 

“The storm!” she cried out. “It’s - “

 

“Still goin’,” he said flatly, and pointed off to the side of the courtyard, over where the manicured hedges ended toward the edge of the roof.

 

Distant lightning flashed, somehow looking much further away than it had from the front door of the museum, and if she strained her ears, she could hear the thunder, too, sounding as though it was miles away instead of right on their doorstep.

 

“That’s so weird… “

 

Ryuji was already back at the double doors, refusing to look her in the eye. “Yeah, well. This whole fuckin’ thing is. What’d you expect,” he said sullenly.

 

She’d been wrapped up in her own problems to the point that she’d forgotten about his. “We’ll get out. I bet it’s only been a day or so. Your mom’ll just give you a slap on the wrist.”

 

His face spasmed, and she remembered too late that he’d already snapped at her once before, on the first night they’d spent inside the museum, when he’d told her that it wasn’t the prospect of being grounded that he was worried about. But he caught himself in time and seemed to accept the spirit of what she’d said. He nodded, stonefaced, and they went back inside to tell the others.

 

Apparently, it was time to take a bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know? Sexual bonding between bonobos helps to establish new individuals as members of the group

**Author's Note:**

> I post Persona 5 fanart to Twitter here: https://twitter.com/araforreal
> 
> Come yell with me about P5!


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